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OPERATION HEINRICH: PROLOGUE

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell

THE FOREIGN OFFICE
UNITED KINGDOM, LONDON
17 AUGUST 1914


Prince Karl Max von Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador accredited to the United Kingdom, appeared in a great hurry to see Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary. He scarcely noticed the fine Italianate design of the Foreign Office building; he was to used to it, and to pressed, to admire it, though his nose did remind him of the gentle smell of fine tobacco smoke which hung in the lobby where he waited with but a single aide. At the moment he was in to much of a hurry to even think of smoking, which he somewhat regretted, but this success was more than enough to compensate for his current urgency in delivering it to the British government.

It had been a major diplomatic effort on the part of certain factions in the German government to produce this note, which would itself be a great diplomatic achievement. It was, of course, not of much meaning. Karl Max knew that there were many factions in the German military who still thought that violating the terms of this agreement would be perfectly sensible. But that wasn't the point; the point was that it bought Germany time and manoeuvring room, and time and manoeuvring room was what Germany needed. Great armies were clashing in both the east and the west, and the fate of the Empire hung in the balance.

It was not a personal assurance from the Kaiser, of course. He would never let himself get manoeuvred into risking his word of honour on a matter like this which his diplomats could change under his feet. But it came from the government, and in parliamentary-minded Britain, that would be enough. Worse, the whole thing had been delayed by the weekend and it had only now gotten out; the delay had simply taken to long as it was, with three weeks in which Britain tottered as events in the continent developed uncertainly, and nobody in Germany was prepared to say the necessary words to secure the peace until only now. But there had been a reason for the delay, and it was something that even Von Lichnowsky was somewhat annoyed with.

In one of their previous meetings—on the 6th—Sir Edward Grey had modestly noted that the Royal Navy would be forced to intervene to protect the safety of British neutrality and British shipping if the High Seas Fleet tried to force its way through the English Channel against the French.

That was, of course, an ultimatum of what would be required to make the United Kingdom go to war, and naturally it had thrown the entire process—which had nearly reached the wording of a note as it stood—back to square one, and it had taken from there another ten days to get the German government to agree sufficiently (and, it was rumoured, several exchanges of private letters between Kaiser Wilhelm and King George) to guarantee that German naval units would not operate in the Channel under any circumstance. But at last it had been done; first thing Monday morning the message had been sent out, and immediately Karl Max had moved to make sure that it got into the right hands to end the crisis decisively before it got worse.

At last—and it had only been a few minutes—a liveried attendant came down and bowed formally. “Your Highness. Your party is welcome to meet with His Excellency the Foreign Secretary now. Please follow me.”

“Of course,” Prince von Lichnowsky answered negligently, and followed at once in the wake of the attendant, his aide following him in turn as they navigated through the fine building on a journey with which the Prince was not unfamiliar, but which seemed to be taken with more haste than usual, though the attendant surely kept the same pace as always.

They arrived, and the attendant introduced the Prince: “Your Excellency, His Highness Prince Karl Max von Lichnowsky, the Ambassador of His Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II.” At that, he bowed and retired.

Prince von Lichnowsky stepped into Sir Edward's office to find the British Foreign Secretary standing. He cut a dashing figure of middle age; very thoughtful eyes, slightly receding hair, a generally modest and healthy figure in his black formal suit. Karl Max admired him greatly, and though he regretted that this message was more hollow than it might seem, yet perhaps it could hold.

“Your Highness,” Sir Edward greeted the German Ambassador cordially, as he always would, no matter his private feelings on the matter of the current war—he viewed the danger of the defeat of France quite acutely. “Please, do have a seat, do have a seat.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Karl Max replied as he sat, and took the diplomatic pouch from his aide, opening it quickly. “I have most excellent news for the British government, which has only just arrived from Berlin.”

Sir Edward looked most interested indeed. He had to, perhaps, even guess what the contents were, but he waited, nonetheless, while the Prince tugged them the copy of the telegraph out of his diplomatic pouch—the original receiver's copy, complete with typos and blotted out words that had been hastily corrected, for Prince von Lichnowsky had proceeded in such haste that he had not spared the time to have it formally composed. It was offered over to Sir Edward without a moment's hesitation, and as he took it up, Karl Max summarized the contents:

“Your Excellency, I am most pleased to report that the German government has agreed to provide an assurance of the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Belgian. The agreement is binding in all situations save a French violation of Belgian neutrality—and in that case, only a direct request from the King of Belgium for our aide would suffice to render it inoperative. This is endorsed by every level of the German government.”

“And Luxembourg?” Sir Edward asked quietly.

“We will evacuate our troops from Luxembourg on the conclusion of the war and the Sovereign and people of that nation will be free to choose their own destiny. That is the solemn promise of the German government.”

“Then there is a final matter at hand, and that is the most urgent. I trust that the German government in whole fully understands the British position on the importance of the Channel, and how it must be kept free of the dehabilitating effects of a general European war for the sake of British national interests?”

Karl Max here replied in a cool, though still very polite way. “The Government received that note with all its due gravity, and has agreed, after the discussion necessary in a matter of such gravity, to abide entirely by the proposition that Britain intends to secure the neutrality and peace of the waters of the English Channel, and that the German government is hereby fully willing to assure, as outlined in the note, that under no circumstance as part of the hostilities against France or Russia shall German warships enter the English Channel.”

“Very well, then,” Sir Edward replied, showing the usual British stoicism in the face of what appeared to be the certain end of any chance of British involvement in the conflict, for good or ill.

“There are those who will not consider these promises enough,” Sir Edward continued after a moment's quiet reflection. “But they are in the minority, and I must say that in my own view this document is sufficient to insure that no great tragedy shall befall the relations of the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic peoples.” His own personal view on the matter, of course, was now irrelevant.

“May God see to it!” Prince von Lichnowsky agreed in a far more fervent relief.

Sir Edward knew on his part that war was now impossible, even though it seemed dangerous for France to be left to fight alone. In the past two weeks the issue in Ireland had been growing steadily more threatening, however, and Home Rule was the phrase on everyone's lips, even as the Continent was watched uneasily. Now that the uneasy watching would not transform into anything more was all but guaranteed.


BOSSAU, OST PREUSSEN
18 AUGUST 1914


Moltke the Younger stood silently, as the pins on the map in front of him were adjusted to represent news of the success of General von Francois' operations with I Corps of 8th Army the day before. It had been very bad news that the action had happened at all, because it meant a most serious concentration of Russian troops in the area of Gumbinnen was advancing, contrary to the expectations of the plan. The Russians should not have mobilized yet! But it was to late to halt Operation Heinrich.

On the positive side, the encounter had gone very well for the German Army. I Corps had engaged the Russians around Stalluponen and sliced through a dispersed corps-sized formation of the Russian Army there. More than three thousand prisoners had been taken and Von Francois, commanding the vanguard corps of 8th army, was now pressing into the heart of a Russian formation believed to be a major army under the commander of their General Rennenkampf; the Russians, in a display of shocking disregard for operational security, had been broadcasting orders in the clear.

More data was pouring in, of course, but the first and most obvious thing was that Francois had dispersed a whole Russian corps and in doing so had torn a gap into the flank of the Russian formation—possibly destroying it entirely. General von Prittwitz was reluctantly following up on this, and Moltke had just dispatched an order demanding that he press home the attack more aggressively. He didn't trust Prittwitz, and it was clear that Francois' action had opened up a very considerable advantage for the German Army, which might soon need it.

That said, it was only 8th army that was currently engaged. 9th Army—the forces from Northern Germany which had been made available since the High Seas Fleet could easily prevent landings by both France and Russia—was yet unengaged on the extreme left of the German advance to the north of Gumbinnen in the area above Schillehnnen. Unfortunately it seemed like the weakest flank of the Army was the one engaged with very considerable Russian forces. In the centre the most tenuous part of the advance—third and fourth armies under Hausen and Albrecht—staging out of Lotzen in the Mausurian lakes was swinging into Russia without having engaged any sort of enemy at all.

On the right flank the situation was different to still another degree. The advance proceeding south from Eylau had not yet engaged in action, but it was clear from radio transmissions and from the reports of cavalry that there was a force massing in front of it. The extreme right flank held the strong 1st Army under Von Kluck, necessary to deal with the breakout of the Warsaw Military District forces which was expected. But here, again, Von Kluck was not yet engaged; on the other hand, 7th Army under Heeringen had cavalry scouts ahead which had reported the mustering of possibly another army-sized force, still in Russian territory around Ostrolenka.

This was not so much of a problem as the offensive of the Russian forces in the north-east posed. That the Russians would defend here was expected, though it was thought that they would be concentrated further west, toward Mlawa. This meant that the weaker of the two armies of the right flank would be engaged against this Russian force: Actively planning for anything more than the engagement at the moment was impossible, for it was impossible to say what sort of forces were opposed to Von Kluck's powerful First Army.

“General, Sir.”

Moltke looked to his chief of staff. “Go ahead.”

“We have a new report in from 8th Army. Von Prittwitz has acknowledged your orders and as a consequence is committing the 3rd Reserve Division under Von Morgen to support I Corps. He also reports that he has solid information that yesterday Von Francois destroyed a Russian division and has consequently now split in two the right-flank corps of the the Russian army facing him. He asks for further instructions in this light.”

“General von Prittwitz shall obey my latest orders with the utmost vigor; these facts do not change their relevance,” Motlke replied after a moment. It was really quite true, after all, and it would not do to get to overconfident; though--if 9th Army continued to remain unengaged, this suggested some interesting possibilities with what appeared to be the flank of the Russian army in the Gumbinnen region having already collapsed after a day of fighting. Very interesting possibilities indeed, particularly since the centre of the German advance was as of yet entirely unengaged, though Moltke did not believe it possible that, with a Russian army apparently facing each of his flanks, that they should not have some sort of covering force in the centre; it must be deeper into Russian territory, and so he prepared another dispatching instructing particular caution on the part of Hausen and Albrecht. It would be a long evening.

Ooh, very interesting

An alt-history WW 1?
This should be interesting as this period has been largely ignored by alt-history authors in favor of WW2.
I guess Hitler and FDR are more interesting than the Kaiser and that asshole Wilson.

I look forward to more chapters.

Very nice. The medium to long term strategic outlook will be very interesting.

OPERATION HEINRICH: CHAPTER ONE.

A collaborative work by Marina O’Leary and Christopher Purnell


Zimony, Vojvodina
18 AUGUST 1914


Plan B, the invasion of Serbia, had called for a rapid thrust by 2nd Armee down the Morava River into Serbia with the aim of encircling Belgrade. That plan had gone to hell when, predictably, the Russians had declared war in support of their Serbian cousins. The Germans were making some sort of major offensive into Russia, it was true, but in the meantime the presence of 2nd Armee in Vojvodina instead of Bukovina left Austrian Galicia very vulnerable. And so the Chief of the General Staff, General der Infanterie Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, had ordered the elements of 2nd Armee facing Serbia to entrain for Galicia and reconstitute to protect the right flank of the 3rd Armee. A portion of 2nd Armee had remained in Galicia, grouped around the XII Corps and its commander Hermann von Kövess, but it would be hard pressed to support 3rd Armee until the rest of its parent command arrived.

Having already launched a number of attempts to cross the Danube and take Belgrade, 2nd Armee had thus faced the delicate problem of extricating itself from action, reforming, replacing losses as best it could in a very short amount of time, and then heading northwards over the Austrian rail lines. To make matters worse, the commander of the Southwestern Front, Feldzügmeister Oskar Potiorek, had insisted on continuing to try to invade Serbia with 6th Armee in Bosnia, and 5th Armee across the Sava River. The withdrawal of 2nd Armee would open up the flank of 5th Armee to Serbian counterattack unless Potierek halted his offensive, which was unlikely.

Since the Emperor had been persuaded to give Potierek an independent command to avenge the debacle at Sarajevo, Conrad could not simply order him to stop the attacks until the Russians had been dealt with. Now, fully a week since the withdrawal of 2nd Armee had begun, its last flanking guard force for 5th Armee was about to finally withdraw.

The Austrian VII Corps had spent the first two weeks of August doing nothing beyond guarding the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers. Their position allowed them to guard the flank of 5th Armee and to provide protection for the bombardment of Belgrade and Serbian positions just across the border.

The 2nd Armee commander, General der Infanterie Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli, had left them in place while the rest of 2nd Armee withdrew precisely for that reason. But finally, with the other elements of 2nd Armee en-route to Galicia or preparing for entrainment, time had run out; and so orders were sent to Corps headquarters to remove from the line to a marshalling point at Ujvidek. The Chief of Staff for VII Corps then made arrangements to dispatch a rider to find General Otto Meixner to inform him of the long-awaited moment.

The positions of the 67th Infantry Brigade just south of Zimony, just inside the border of Austria and within artillery range of Belgrade and the Serbian positions near the city, was the most exposed part of the VII Corps. General Meixner had left for them in the morning, to confer with the commander of the 34th Infantry Division on the process of their evacuation, as well as to conduct an inspection of the Corps artillery units and men of the brigade.

The lieutenant sent to locate him found him in a command tent at the edges of the artillery park, safely away from attack by the limited Serbian artillery, and only a short ride to the headquarters established by the 34th Division inside Zimony. He secured his horse by a row of posts outside with other animals reserved for dispatch riders sent out from the command tent, and entered with message held tightly in hand.

Inside there were a collection of wire operators connected to the artillery batteries outside, as if the commander here sought to control their operations at remote. Further to the back of the tent was a large staff table, with a highly detailed map of the topography of the area and positions of Austrian and known Serbian units. General Meixner was at the end of the table, leaning over the map and examining the layout of a line of positions pointed to by the commander of the 67th Brigade. The Feldmarschalleutnant who commanded the 34th Division was peering intently at the same map from the right of General Meixner, and was obviously on the verge of making some comment or another. There were a passel of lower-ranking officers and aides lining the table’s sides or standing off somewhat at a distance, but the lieutenant paid them no attention as he approached the table. One of them, a major, leaned over and spoke quietly to the General, who looked up at the approaching message rider, who stopped suddenly and saluted.

The lieutenant parsed his chapped lips, and then informed them of his mission. “A message from General von Böhm-Ermolli arrived today for General der Infanterie Meixner. Oberst Schilhawsky sent me to deliver it here.”

Meixner returned the salute. “At ease, lieutenant.” He nodded to the Feldmarschalleutnant, who took over the meeting as Meixner walked around the aides to take the message from the rider. The lieutenant handed over the telegraph from Army Headquarters, and watched Meixner open and parse it. The order was no surprise, and preparing for it had been the impetus behind this meeting in the first place. “Stay here,” he ordered the junior officer, “and be ready to take a response back to the Oberst.”

He walked back to inform the rest of the commanders of the final word. “We will have to pull out fully and soon. We have been ordered to leave our heavy artillery regiment to participate in the bombardment of Belgrade, which at least simplifies matters somewhat. A Honvéd infantry division will be here on the 20th, so you need to be out of your positions and on the way to Ujvidek by then. We have discussed the withdrawal and handover at some length, but are there any other questions about what must be done?”

Generalmajor von Launigen, the commander of the 67th Brigade, looked distinctly unhappy. “They are replacing a Corps with a single division.
Madness! That will be no impediment at all to the Serbs if they decide to attack the flanks of 5th Armee.”

His immediate superior, Feldmarschalleutnant Krautwald of the 34th division, shrugged his shoulders. “The Serbs have been tenacious on defense, but they lack the modern arms and doctrine to successfully counterattack General Frank’s command. They wouldn’t dare risk the security of Belgrade on an attack against a superior foe. If they failed, the city would be defenseless against a further advance and would require them to withdraw from their efforts in Bosnia. They will instead continue their defensive posture to delay the fall of the capital and will rely on Russian victories to save their country.”

“We have our orders, at any rate,” Meixner observed. “What happens to Fifth Armee is none of our concern now. The Russians are. Can you meet the deadline, Generalmajor?”

Von Launigen nodded stiffly. “Yes, Herr General. We have been preparing for some time, so it is only a matter of putting those preparations into practice. Infantry regiment 61 will remove itself starting tonight at 2000 hours, and will be followed by the field artillery regiment at 0800 hours in the morning, with infantry regiment 29 ready to hand off control of the sector to the Honvéd as they arrive.”

Krautwald nodded in satisfaction. “Infantry regiment 29 will be the last element of the 34th Division to depart. I will order infantry brigade 68 to pull out with the field howitzer regiment in an hour, with your leave.”

Meixner nodded, and Krautwald then absented himself from the discussion to find his aide and send him back to divisional headquarters. The General der Infanterie scanned the map a bit more, trying to look for vulnerabilities in the plan. “Obviously the possibility of Serbian raids will exist if they realize we are in the process of withdrawing. Doing so at night will provide the cover you require, I think. I will however ask army headquarters to see about securing the services of one of the Grenzjäger companies to provide a screen for regiment 29.”

“Thank you sir,” von Launigen replied with sincere appreciation. “Those troops are good for this sort of work. They’d hurt any small raiding party and provide plenty of warning of any larger attack. Maybe enough warning even to get those lazy artillery crews to work.”

Meixner chuckled a little. “At least the artillerymen have the virtue of not belonging to the cavalry. If there is anything else you need for this withdrawal, ask and I will see about getting it for you.” He held up his hand to forestall a request out of von Launigen. “One minute, though.”

The commander of VII Corps pointed towards the nearly forgotten lieutenant.

“Leutnant! You have paper and pencil with you?” When the junior officer nodded, Meixner continued on. “I want you to take a message back to Corps headquarters. Write this down. Oberst Schilhawsky is directed to send out the orders for withdrawal to 17th Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry Division, and other VII Corps commands. The directions have already been filed with the chief of staff, he knows where they are. And he is to signal our compliance to 2nd Armee headquarters. Have you written all of that down?”

The lieutenant looked up from his message pad. “Yes sir. You will need to sign this, sir.” He offered the pad and short pencil to Meixner, who examined the writing briefly. “Good handwriting,” he said curtly, and then scribbled his signature across the bottom. “Go quickly now,” he ordered.
“There is not much time, and much yet to do.”


Janow, Poland
AUGUST 19, 1914


It was the early, as the sun first began to rise in the sky, when the peasant villagers on farms in the countryside outside of the small town of Janow began their day. Animals needed to be fed, fields needed to be inspected ahead of the harvest, fences needed mending; the list of chores was nearly endless. The backbreaking routine of agriculture had scarcely changed at all since the partitions of Poland, even if the Russians had broken the petty szlatcha in revenge for the uprisings. There was, however, time to get in individual breaks in the morning, to eat a light snack or to smoke the coarse tobacco available to the peasantry.

Jasomir Radtke was taking the last few dregs on his accustomed Russian cigarette, out by the road by his fields, when he saw the first horsemen come over the horizon. Their pale grey uniforms did not stand out much against the sky, but their curious hats, tall and boxy, attracted attention. The Russians were at war, Jasomir knew; they had ordered his eldest son into the army, but the boy hadn’t left for the regional capital at Lublin yet. There were only a handful of the cavalry coming onward at a wary trot, and so he put it out of his mind. They wouldn’t bother him, he wouldn’t bother them. Even the Cossacks on the move would generally not break off to harass nominally friendly peasants.

By the time the horsemen were close enough to see clearly Jasomir had returned to work in the fields. They weren’t Russians. His cousin Tadeusz lived on the other side of the border, and Jasomir visited him often enough not to be alarmed at the presence of Austrian cavalry on the road. Thinking about it for a moment, as a minor distraction from toil, he rather hoped they did run the Russians out. That would stop the Tsar from taking away Andrzej to be a soldier before the harvest was done. And then Jasomir threw himself once more into his labor, shutting off his mind as he repeated over and over the same motions he had for decades now.

He was snapped out of his rhythm by the sound of joking voices coming from the road. The first knot of horse had passed by him entirely and dispersed towards the approaches to town, but a second, larger group had followed them. For people who had to be concerned about other people trying to kill them, Jasomir thought, they really were too casual about it. Then he realized they were speaking in Polish.

One of the horsemen in the pike-grey uniforms looked down at Radtke, his attention drawn by the movements of the peasant’s work, and directed his horse to a stop. The cavalryman said something in Ruthenian, then realizing Jasomir didn’t understand him, switched to Polish. “Hullo, good chap. That town up ahead is Jasnow, right?”

Jasomir shrugged his shoulders. “That’s what the sign should say, down the road.”

The cavalryman seemed to be amused by his answer. “Maybe the sign said that yesterday, or the day before. For today, somebody seems to have swiped it.”

“The yids,” Jasomir spat out reflexively.

The cavalryman speaking to him, as well as his comrades in earshot, had a hearty chuckle. “They will steal anything not nailed down, but even a tax-collector Jew would not bother with a road sign.” The cavalryman seemed to get more sober after that jest. “Have any Russians passed by here lately?”

Radtke hesitated, but only for a minute. It wasn’t his fight, and he owed the Russians nothing. “Yes, three days ago. They were riding north on the way to Lublin. I don’t know anything more about it, though.”

The cavalryman looked satisfied with the answer, and exchanged meaningful glances with his fellow soldiers. They switched to another language for a bit, and then the cavalryman who had been talking to Jasomir pulled out a small coin from his uniform blouse and tossed it to the peasant.

“You have the thanks of the 7th Uhlan Regiment,” he said. “And my wishes for a good day to you.”

With that, he spurred his horse back into a trot, and the rest of the clump of horsemen followed. Jasomir reached down greedily at the silver coin, stamped “Fünf Krone” and with the profile of an old man with mutton-chops on the side of his face. He pocketed it without giving his profit, or the encounter that led to it, a second thought, and started his work once more.

He would at least have a story to tell at dinner, though.

As the cavalry detachment advanced further up the road, Rittmeister Mikolaj Borek discussed the encounter with a Leutnant Hanucz of his company. “You see,” he stated, “that is how you handle the peasants. Be kind, with a sense of bonhomie, that sort of thing.”

Hanucz looked dubiously at him. “On my family’s estate in Bukovina we have to stay on top of the peasants if we want their rents. Otherwise they will just work hard enough to feed themselves, and spend their time plastered drunk.”

“That might be true,” Borek conceded, “but those are Ruthenes. Lazy, ignorant beasts, all of them. But we’re advancing into Poland now. These are Polish peasants, hardy and efficient. Good strong yeomanry, and they’re our countrymen. So you must treat them differently than you would your local peasants.”

Hanucz looked thoughtful for a moment; neither noticed the scowl on the face of one of the private soldiers ahead of them, a Ruthene from the area around Lemburg. Finally the lieutenant asked Borek an obvious question. “If they’re our brothers, then why are we invading them?”

His captain chuckled again. “You must not have gotten away from those estates much. We’re fighting the Russians now. We aren’t invading; we are liberating this part of Poland from the Tsar, even if we have to fight for the Habsburgs to do it. If they win, this part of Poland and our Galicia will be united once again, and of the three bastards who split up our Commonwealth, the Habsburgs have given us the freest reign. And afterwards?”

He smiled, calculatingly. “Well, who knows how things will develop? But the Catholic Austrians will tolerate our national development and rights better than the Orthodox Russians, who want to turn us into obedient little slaves.

And the Prussians aren’t too kind to their betters and our brothers in their territory, either. So it’s in the best interests of Poland to secure this land and put an end to Russification, and we can let the next step come to us. We Poles are a patient people, and with patience we will undo what was done to us decades ago.”

As they neared the town, a cavalryman approached them from up the road, one of the scouts sent by earlier, before the dawn.

“Stabswachtmeister Poborski reporting, sir”, he stated as he entered earshot.

Borek returned his salute casually. “You may procede.”

“My detachment advanced through Janow before 0600 hours. We have scouted out the nearby area to a distance of two kilometers, with other detachments fanning out in other directions. One of the forward patrols exchanged shots with some sort of enemy unit, but we don’t know what type and the Russians didn’t press them,” he added as if in explanation.

“Good, Stabswachtmeister,” the Rittmeister assured him. “What is the attitude of the inhabitants of the town?”

“Mostly apathetic, sir. They stayed in their houses as we passed through, though the headman or mayor did talk with the small force left to secure the village. He assured us there would be no problem under the circumstances, and offered us assurances of his hatred of the Russians and love for the Emperor.” The sergeant smiled grimly. “And if the Russians push us out of this village tomorrow he’ll probably meet them singing ‘God Bless the Tsar’.”

“Probably,” Borek agreed. “As I said, good work Stabswachtmeister. Return to your detachment and keep up the scouting patrols. I do believe however that I will set up headquarters at Janow, at least for the day. We have advanced far enough ahead of Tenth Corps, and still have not encountered Russians in force. I do not want to get strung out ahead and ground under when the Ivans finally do get their act together.”

“Yes sir,” replied the sergeant, and he gave a final salute before turning his mount around and galloping back down the road to town.

“It would also be agreeable to spend the night in a decent house, unlike last night,” Hanucz noted. “Maybe we can appropriate the mayor’s? I know his type from Bukovina. He’ll have the best of everything in the town.”

“An excellent idea, Leutnant Hanucz!” Borek responded. “Now, I want you to fall back and collect your section. Bring them up; they are going to reinforce positions in the town. And I,” he stated with relish, “am going to discuss a few things with this mayor.”


DIEU, LOTHARINGEN
19 AUGUST 1914


The band was playing the March of the Defenders of the Sambre and Meuse. The regiment, in blue jackets and red pantaloons, advanced with a splendid order against the Germans around Dieu, bayonets fixed, coming on crisply at the double-quick. The 276e regiment d'infanterie held the centrepoint of the advance upon Dieu on the right flank of French 2nd Army in Lorraine, racing forward across the flat ground to come to grips with the Germans beyond.

This was not going to be easy, however. Regular troops had already tried to take Dieu the day before and been driven back by the German defenders. A second attack on a larger scale had been formed at once and sent forward, and the 276e and 131e regiments were attacking the centre of the city alone. Not less than four divisions comprised the right flank of 2nd Army, which had 180,000 men. That they were in fact outnumbered by the force opposing them, thanks to the German disposition which had concentrated troops in the north at the expense of defending Alsace, was as--of yet entirely unknown to them, and would be unknown to the regimental officers regardless.

What was known was that there was a shattered regiment ahead which needed relief and a city of Lorraine which needed liberation, and so the French came on at the quick step. It was a fine and splendid, hot summer day, and the in the fields the tall grass where cattle normally grazed reached up to the thighs of many of the men, slowing their progress, and, sadly, giving them no cover. For the peace only lasted for a few minutes at most, as a section of four German machineguns were laid on to the 131e regiment from a small copse to the regiment's right, and as soon as they were emplaced, commenced to fire down upon them.

The scene was one of the greatest bloodshed. The band of the 131e regiment was struck through with the bullets of two machine guns; they had been playing La Victoire ou la Mort and now they lived it. The surviving members, some wounded, continued to play and advance, and the officers, their sabres drawn, led from the front rank. There were many fatalities among their number, but as they passed the point where the earlier regular regiment had been penned down, men rose out of the tall grass to join the ranks of the two advancing regiments with a loud cheer. They had spent the night cold, hungry, and under constant fire, but they did not think their job done, and the generals watching to the rear congratulated themselves on the splendid élan of the French soldier.

Twice the regiment colours of the 131e regiment fell as the sharpshooters who had kept the 150e regiment of regulars pinned down over the night now turned their attention to picking off men in the ranks of the advancing 131e; twice they were picked up. The regulars rose up with their own colours, soaked in the dew of the morning as they had been held close to the body of the Captain who now commanded the regiment through the night, and advanced in tandem with those of the 131e. In the meanwhile, rows of men toppled under the action of the four German machineguns, raking their way through the formation of the regiment as it advanced crisply in a swirl of red pantaloons and a cacophony of gunfire, music, and the shouts of men—shouts of courage, some, and shouts of pain as crimson blood splashed on blue tunics, the rest. But the shouts of courage drown out the others, in the world and in the hearts of the men, and they continued to advance.

Charles Peguy, commanding the 19th platoon of the 276e Regiment, was all the more pleased by the splendid show. As a poet he was naturally taken with a love for his country; for all the beauty in it; and he had volunteered at once. Since the 11th he had commanded this platoon and now he led it forward on the attack. The terrible slaughter in the neighboring 131e excited his passion to press on, even as the more thinly spread regulars who had attacked the day before also fell in with them here. They were now within a clear field of fire for the German rifles ahead, and such a calvacade was at once directed upon them. The order to fire was promptly given.

“Fire, fire! Faster, now, for France!” Charles cried out, sword thrust forward, and set a pace so fast that the double-quick began nearly a run, anticipating the order a moment later for the men to charge, which the officers, sabres flashing in the sun, provided the example for. The small magazines of their Lebel-Berthiers were expended in a moment, a total of four rounds from each man and then it was down to cold steel. To the right a battery of 75's had been raced forward by their battery horses to a position in front of the advancing 131e regiment, and even as the machineguns tore pitifully into the horses and the men of the batteries they commenced to fire, heaving in shell after shell and putting eighty rounds on the German machine-guns in a heartbeat. The rapid thud of the guns firing could be heard all across the field, the bark of the light shells throwing out shrapnel through the German position to the right.

Ahead, the German fire had begun terribly intense, and Charles felt an abrupt heat above his head; he glanced up for a moment to see that a bullet had crissed his right ear and a bit of blood was showing. He ignored it and twirled his sword once more, as his men paused in a moment's hesitation from the intensity of the German fire. “Reload! Put it them, and then give them cold steel!” It was just like 1870; except that this time, it was France attacking, and Germany defending—and thus would France's humiliation be avenged.

The exchange of fire at close range was very brief. The French rifles were scarcely better than single-shot with such magazines and all of the French officers wanted to get to grips with the bayonet at close range with the Germans. Charles certainly did not hesitate; he pushed forward once more, and only then did he realize that he was the only officer of his company still unwounded and leading the men. Taking the duty in stride with the mad fervour of a Romantic for occasions like these, he ran along the front in clear view of every German rifleman, gesturing with his sword.

“Up and forward! Up and forward!” He shouted, screaming, to be sure that the whole of the company rushed forward as they now did to come to grips with the Germans at the bayonet. To the German defenders this was to much; they were not prepared to contest Dieu with cold steel and they fell back after only brief hand to hand fighting, leaving Lieutenant Peguy's sword unbloodied. Thus did the 276e regiment press on into the town, which the Germans neglected to fight in street to street, with what seemed a genuinely civilized sentiment.

Dieu was taken, but the 131e and 276e regiments had suffered 20% casualties in the attack, and the regiment which had attacked the day before a total of 40% from both of the combats. Other regiments involved in the operation on either flank had generally suffered at least 10% and sometimes 15% casualties. The Germans had retreated in good order, and that was exactly what the Bavarian Prince Rupprecht, the commander of the army against which the French fought, had intended. The situation was untenable in Alsace, and he intended a victory here that would reverse it.


WEST OF AUGUSTOW
RUSSIAN-GERMAN BORDER
19 AUGUST 1914


As it stood, Russian II Corps was now advancing toward Lyck in East Prussia. It had commenced its advance from the area of the town of Augustow on the southern edge of the Augustow Forest, a nearly impenetrable mire which was crossoed only by two rail-lines, which met at Augustow on its southwestern edge with a third that ran along the south fringe of the forest. This made Augustow a crucial point for the Germans to capture and it was the first objective of 3rd Army. 4th Army was in the meanwhile advancing from the Klaussen area toward Grajevo on the Russian side down one of the rail connections in the area between the German and Russian railroad networks; this force was entirely unopposed. 3rd Army was not.

The commander of Russian II Corps, attached to Rennenkampf's First Army, had succeeded in getting sufficient intelligence out of the morass of the East Prussian wilderness to realize that his advance on Lyck was in serious trouble. He had halted in some forest inside East Prussia, and generally brought his men to the top of a slight rise, anchoring his left flank on the easternmost of the Mausurian lakes. There they entrenched as they had been taught by their experience in the Russo-Japanese war, but the entrenchments were minimal, and they were lacking in wire.

By the afternoon of the 19th it was soon blatantly clear that indeed II Corps was facing the opposition of a whole Army. Around 10 AM that morning there had been an exchange of fire with the cavalry scouts of the force; by 2 PM the troops were in sight and the fighting commenced immediately. Reports soon confirmed that they were facing Saxon troops, and indeed there were two corps engaged against the Russians, Saxon XII and Saxon XIV corps of Hausen's 3rd Army. Neither of the corps were yet fully engaged as XII Corps had difficulty in getting into position against the lake and XIV Corps' frontage extended to the right of II Corps in a nebulous area where Rennenkampf's dispersed position had left but a single detached division for many miles of front with which II Corps was now desperately trying to get in touch.

The Germans attacked under the support of their divisional artillery; the Russians could not count on their corps artillery, for it had been held behind in the poor terrain and by the speed of the advance. They had been surprised to find the enemy here, for their intelligence reports of the day earlier had reported the area entirely deserted, and they hoped he had not been there long and that a stiff attack might dislodge him. They were wrong. For the next four hours the Germans attacked and they were thrown back. Despite lacking their corps-level artillery in the battle the Russians stood their ground doggedly, repulsing each German attack and inflicting a vicious casualty rate upon the Saxons. Thanks to this defensive effort and the confusion on the extreme left of the Russian formation thanks to the German efforts to bring their forces around the lake, 32nd Infantry Division of the XII Corps was entirely disordered and essentially ineffective by the end of the day, and the other divisions of both corps had, with the exception of one, also been badly handled.

Ernst Freiherr von Hoiningen was the commander of XIV Corps and he knew that his force had not done well during the day. But he had received a report from the commander of the 18th Uhlans regiment attached to the 24th division—which was as-of-yet still unengaged and pressing forward through the dense forest on the left--which was very interesting. Immediate duties, however, prevented him from dealing with the report's conclusions at once.

“2nd Sachisches Fußartillerie reports readiness, Sir,” his chief of staff stepped away from the field wireless. In addition to the field wireless, of course, each German Army had at least one full professor of mathematics attached to it to handle coding; though that was scarcely necessary in breaking the enemy codes, for the Russians often transmitted in the clear. The Germans had no such concerns for their own wireless use.

“Orders from General Hausen were clear,” he replied. “We commence firing at once and send orders for the 40th division to initiated the ordered withdraw from the field under the cover of the corps artillery, as planned.” In the distance, Von Hoiningen could hear the corps artillery of XII Saxon just now opening up against the Russian positions as well. A full regiment of 10.5cm howitzers, and they were about to be joined by a second, whereas the Russians had so far not brought any heavy artillery into play on the field—it would have been much worse if they had, and it was already a bloody charnel house out on the field before Von Hoiningen.

“Certainly, Sir. What about the report from the 18th Uhlans?”

“It seems we have a real opportunity there, but I'm worried that if we wait that General Hausen will hold back the 24th Division out of fear that they could become disordered or lost in the forest in the night. I say that we shall take the risk and order them ahead and then I will report the action to General Hausen after we have commenced the withdraw of 40th Division as per our instructions. Now let's get those artillery batteries into action!” The sentence came with a tight look on Hoiningen's face, for he knew how badly the men of the 40th division had suffered that day and he did not want to prolong it further.

“At once, General.” His Chief of Staff could sense the opportunity as much as he could—for the report was clear, the 18th Uhlans had encountered nothing to the left of the Russian formation. The Russians they had been fighting were anchored only by air, and elements of the 24th Division might well already be further east than their defensive line was. It was an opportunity that had to be snatched without hesitation. Hoiningen's Chief of Staff gave the orders for the corps artillery to commence and then at once returned.

“What are the orders I shall send to the commander of the 40th division, then, General?”

“The 40th division shall continue to advance throughout the night—slowly, and with the utmost caution—but without halting. If they encounter enemy forces in the night they must attack at once directly at them; there is to much confusion in a night action to allow for finesse or the division to retire.”

With a crisp nod his Chief of Staff turned away, leaving Hoiningen to look out over the dark black of the primeval forest, much of which had surely not seen men in it for decades, or centuries, and to spots where fires wafted up from some of the ground cover burning; to the sight of the units ahead, and the feel of the sun as it set, casting its heat upon the back of his neck. Then the corps artillery opened up with such a thunderous power and awesome sound as to shake loose even his thoughts, and after a moment of listening to it roll across the forest he turned back to the map laid out on a table in the tent of his field headquarters and, half-shouting over the din of the nearby howitzers, directed the notation of the changing positions of the two divisions upon it. The longer the report to Von Hausen waited, the better.

Supurb. Athough I may need to aquire an appropriate map to keep a handle on unit dispositions and movement

Stuart Mackey wrote:Supurb. Athough I may need to aquire an appropriate map to keep a handle on unit dispositions and movement :)

Second, third, and fourth are the ones you'll want to reference, keeping in mind that the unit dispositions have changed and are changing rapidly from historical on the Russian side and on the German are simply different.

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Two

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.


WEST OF AUGUSTOW
RUSSIAN-GERMAN BORDER
20 AUGUST 1914


In the early pre-dawn of the morning the nervous Hoiningen, who had scarcely been able to sleep the whole night as he waited for word of the disposition of the 24th division, was rewarded with the arrival of a dispatch rider. He had come from the division, though it had taken him several hours as he had been lost twice in the dense forest, and he had nearly foundered his mount in his effort to make up time. One of the enlisted personnel of the Corps headquarters was walking the horse down as the young lieutenant came to attention and saluted stiffly.

“Sir! A dispatch from 24th division headquarters, Sir!” The bag was handed over with more of the Saxon flair than the usual Prussian efficiency by which the army was stereotyped.

Hoiningen at once opened the dispatch bag and pulled out the letter. It read:

TO XIV KORPS HEADQUARTERS: URGENT
FROM: GEN THIELMANN, 2 SACHISCHES DIV.

General, I have brought my division in good order to beyond the Russian lines without opposition. I am now prepared to swing into the rear of the Russian position and attack. We are prepared for the attack and most disorder in the ranks from the night advance has been rectified. The 18th Uhlans are deployed to my left as a screen and I await only your order to execute a right pivot

Von Hoiningen translated the unit designation from the Saxon to the German Army's system in his mind, which was then promptly focused on the opportunity that the report portended. There was a time when even waiting to consult with one's staff was pointless—with the long ride of the dispatch rider ahead, the timing would work out just fine.. Or it should, at any rate. In a hasty scrawl, Hoiningen wrote out the order that General Thielmann would need:

Right pivot and attack at once.
Von Hoiningen

He folded up the shorter note, put it in the pouch and handed it over to the rider at once. “You know the route you took, Lieutenant, and you can take it back—with all speed!” A pause, and then, in the direction of his staff: “Get this man a fresh horse!”

Abruptly a towering column of dirt appeared perhaps five hundred meters ahead, and the roar of the shell in flight and then of the impact followed each other as twin buffets, and then another, and another. Hoiningen winced. The Russians brought up their corps-level artillery over the night, the bastards. That was a feat rivalling what the 24th Division had just done; it was always run to underestimate the Russians, but now it would surely do them no good. They were firing HE, which was idiotic, but it might have been the only shells they had available, and they killed just as well against an exposed position.

The dispatch rider was already off on the ordered horse when Hoiningen's chief of staff came up and spoke over the noise of the shelling: “Freiharr! Permission to commence counterbattery fire?”

“Granted!” A moment later: “And send a wireless message to General von Hausen, reporting that the 24th Division is in position to attack the Russian rear.”

His Chief of Staff's look was positively feral: “At once, General!”


BOSSAU, OST PREUSSEN
20 AUGUST 1914


It was evening on the 20th and the fighting that day had considerably intensified. Moltke was far from it, but his thougths were never far from it at all, in fact, they were on the conflict constantly, without wavering, the concentration that he fancied his beliefs had inspired in him. Yet it seemed to do no good; the sun was setting outside, the town around them particularly quiet with the nature of the huge military presence, and wireless and telegraph his means of communication with the armies under his control. Now a decision would have to be made about one of those armies, and he was finally ready to make it.

Moltke took one last look at the estimated position of the units of the Russian 1st Army on his map, and nodded to himself. The time for a decision had come. The northern flank of the Russian army had been entirely collapsed in the attacks which I Corps and the reserve of 8th Army had pressed home since the 17th, and the main frontage of the Russian 1st Army was being badly pressed by the rest of 8th Army in turn; all of which left 9th Army unengaged. Though 9th Army had only one full-strength and two slightly understrength corps it still provided a powerful force, and with reports of the general collapse of the northern portion of the Russian 1st Army, Moltke was regaining his confidence.

He had been badly shaken by the discovery that they were facing at least two fully mobilized Russian Armies. The plan had expected little to no opposition in the sweep through Congress Poland and along the west bank of the Nieman which would ultimately end in a union with the Austrian forces in Galicia and the removal of the great Polish salient from which a dagger could be held into the heart of the Prussian Crownlands. Then the railroads would do their deadly work against the French, if fate and the Kaiser willed it.

But now he was presented with the sort of opportunity that Schlieffen had longed for before his death. Cannae. He had doubted it at first, but it was confirmed. The 9th Army was really in the position for it, and now he could not hesitate any longer or else he would lose the opportunity. He had already issued instructions for his Staff to draw up the orders, though he was taking especial care not to be to bold in this uncertain situation. On the other hand, the unexpected Russian mobilization essentially demanded boldness as a response, and so it would be need in some measure.

At that moment, however, Colonel Hentsch came in to the room in the hotel where Moltke the Younger had set up his command headquarters in Bossau. “Sir!” He saluted. “We have confirmation from 3rd Army. The 24th Division of XIV Corps and XII Reserve Corps have broken through the Russian lines around Augustow and have carried out a flanking attack with success against the Russian forces there in corps strength; the Russians are now in retreat.”

“And to the north, Colonel?” Moltke asked as his mind raced on how this changed the situation once more.

“Just the last wireless report, that XI Corps is being pushed back by fierce resistance in the woods to the north and that General von Hausen has dispatched the cavalry reserve of his Army to assist that force.”

“Very well. And from the south?”

“Twenty minutes ago Von Kluck sent in confirmation that he had moved his Army headquarters to Mlawa and that 1st Army was continuing to 'advance direction Warsaw'.”

“Any word on that corps spotted by his cavalry screen withdrawing northward?”

“None, Sir.”

“And Fourth and Seventh Armies are still unengaged,” Motlke mused to himself, albeit out loud, and paused for a moment, staring off, then nodded. “Alright. I am issuing orders for 9th Army to pivot right—to the south—against the flank of the Russian 1st Army. While you were gone, Colonel, we've had confirmation that their northernmost units are in total disarray. If we act quickly we might well secure the destruction of the Russian Army in the vicinity of Vilkoviski.”

Colonel Hentsch was quite worried, being a cautious and conservative man, but though he might give advice as a representative of OHL to the commanders of armies, he would not presume to question the decision of the Supreme Commander himself, and so he nodded tightly as Moltke turned to have the necessary dispatch made. Slowly the picture of the battle was becoming clear, and with it, boons for Germany, but Moltke would not dare let himself think of the full magnitude of those possibilities until the situation in the South became clear, for that was the most critical thrust and for the plan to avoid being a total disaster it could not be bogged down; there were the French to worry about in the west, after all, and right now the French were doing distressingly well.


JADAR VALLEY, SERBIA
AUGUST 21, 1914


Serbian artillery rained down from the heights of the Cer ridge, where their 2nd Army had dug in heavily and separated the advance of Austrian 5th and 2nd armies into Serbia. The narrow, difficult terrain had let them hold out against repeated assaults from both directions, and to pour fire into the Jadar and Macva valleys as well, causing serious Austrian casualties. Attempts to storm the ridge had seen XIII Corps hold the southern half until driven out by a counterattack the next day, then an attack by the Serbian 3rd Army coming out of Valjevo had been beaten off with heavy casualties, but yet another offensive out of their 2nd Army had threatened the encirclement of VIII Corps. With nothing left to guard the flanks of Fifth Army, there had been only one option to pursue, a withdrawal back across the Save river.

The explosive pounding of the enemy shells was a constant, dull staccato beat even miles behind the (rapidly closing) front lines. The Serbs had realized that VIII Corps was retreating for the beachhead over the Save at Sabac, and were taking the fullest advantage of their excellent harassment positions while they could. Feldmarschalleutnant Viktor Scheuchensteül winced as some of the heavier Serbian artillery pieces opened up on elements of his 17th Brigade, still withdrawing from the area around Cer. He looked up as the chandelier above the foyer of his appropriated headquarters swayed slightly.

“For a backward army lacking in modern equipment, the Serbians are putting out a tremendous volume of firepower,” remarked the commander of that formation, Generalmajor Daniel. He had been getting more cynical as the campaign progressed, and more openly so.

“And they managed to get it up that ridgeline pretty quickly,” his commander replied. “There will be plenty of time for recriminations at another time. In the meantime I have received new orders from Corp command. We are going to try and hold the beachhead at Sabac.”

“Wonderful,” Daniel muttered. “I take it my brigade is to be thrown into the defensive guard once we get clear of Cer?”

“The 18th brigade is ahead of you,” Scheuchensteül conceded, “but they were most badly mauled by the Serbs in their attack on our left flank. Fortunately they bought enough time to extricate the division, but the 17th is in much better shape.”

“That is relative,” the brigade commander replied. “We have suffered a steady attrition in trying to take the ridge, and this damnable artillery fire doing quite a bit more as we pull out. Some of the companies in infantry regiment 91 are down to half-strength, and throughout the brigade we have suffered heavy losses among the junior officers. We might not be able to sustain a prolonged defense against a powerful Serbian effort to drive us over the river, especially if they pursue vigorously.”

“You will only need to hold long enough for XIII Corps to assume responsibility for the beachhead,” the Feldmarschalleutnant reassured him. “That can’t be more than a couple of days, and then General der Infanterie Frank has stated we will be pulled back over the river to receive replacements.”

“Only a couple of days. Of course, our esteemed commander was certain that the Serbs could not possibly get through that Honvéd division that was supposed to cover our flanks. He was also certain the Serbs couldn’t possibly get any artillery up the Cer ridge, either.” Daniel was too tired, and too angry, to rein in his disgust with 5th Armee command.

“That will be enough, Generalmajor,” Scheuchensteül reproached quietly, but firmly. “As we retreat the Serbs will get ahead of their artillery train if they pursue us too vigorously. Now go back to your brigade and rally them, and make sure the way is clear for the Corps cavalry to follow you on. I believe I can even hear the enemy artillery fire slackening off now.”

The din and noise of shelling had become more and more infrequent as they had conversed, and Daniel realized it once his attention was directed to the fact. “The last elements of the brigade will have passed into the extreme range of the Serbia artillery. They won’t waste the shells now.”

“That is their weakness,” the Feldmarschalleutnant nodded. “They will run into shortages of artillery shells before long. Now, see to your command.”

“Yes sir,” Generalmajor Daniel saluted in acknowledgement of the orders, and turned sharply to leave back for the front. Scheuchensteül let him go without further comment. The clock on the wall chimed for one shortly afterward. The interview concluded, the commander of the 9th Infantry Division left to find his chief of staff. As he expected, the Oberst was in the map room, with remains of luncheon plates stowed on a spare table in what had been the dining room. There were other staff and technicians as well clustered around the board indicating the status of every element of the division.

“17th Brigade is fully free of Serbian contact now,” Scheuchensteül announced. Oberst Rainer von Schoesser and the other staff turned and saluted to acknowledge his presence. Schoesser erased a line on the board, and picked up a chalk piece to write in the update.

“We are overdue for a report from the cavalry scout squadron,” he informed Scheuchensteül. “They were to our northwest, scouting for elements of the Serbian II Army that slipped by the Honvéd and into our flanks. The fight with 18th brigade drove off their forward elements, but they have had some time to reform and reinforce.”

Scheuchensteül scowled at that news. “Our scouts should know they have to maintain their report schedules. If we have not heard from them within the hour I will see if Corps command can arrange to send another cavalry detachment into the area. The last thing we need is another attack on our flanks to slow down the evacuation and give the Serbs time to remove their artillery from the Cer ridges.”

“That would be prudent, sir,” von Schoesser concurred. “We do have a request from the artillery brigade to provide more horses to help with transport over these awful roads.”

“That would be up to the Corps quartermaster department,” the Feldmarschalleutnant responded, annoyed that the brigade commander had not gone to the proper authority. He had already ordered some spare draft horses allocated to the artillery to help them, but the infantry had need of them as well.

“Ah, yes sir. It seems however that Oberst Hinke has located a number of horses held by private individuals,” von Schoesser explained. “He wants permission to, well, take them.”

“I suppose the owners won’t take the compensation that we offer?” Scheuchensteül suspected that was exactly the case, but the Oberst might simply have forgotten to offer it.

Schoesser shook his head. “Hinke even offered them market price out of his brigade’s discretionary account. They won’t take it. If the people in this area weren’t patriots for Serbia before, they are now.”

Scheuchensteül knew full well what he meant. The Austrian advance had not conformed very well to rigorous standards of discipline. General Potiorek had little interest in restraining the Magyar, Croat, and Bosnian soldiers under his command as they looted and burned Serbian villages. His sense of vengeance for the death of the Archduke became an opportunity for the nationalities of the Empire with little love towards the Serb people. And the tendency of Serbian civilians to turn franc-tireur had led to harsh reprisals even by the more disciplined German and Czech dominated units involved in the operation, though Scheuchensteül himself hardly considered those a problem. But the tendency of the Slavic and Magyar soldiers to steal anything they could, and torch what they could not, was causing problems getting cooperation out of the locals.

He sighed in frustration at the situation. “Too late to mitigate the damage now. Send a dispatch to Hinke and authorize him to take the horses by force, if he needs to. Leave a receipt and promissory note with the owners. But those horses are to be requisitioned whether they take it or not.”

“Of course, sir.”

Schoesser broke away from the group to go make the arrangements to pass on his order. Scheuchensteül looked over at the position map while his chief of staff was away. The lack of reports from the scouts was a cause for concern if it heralded another Serbian attack on the flank of VIII Corps. He shoved the issue of intransigent peasants to the side of his mind, and began looking for defensive positions available to the division. Just in case.

As it turned out later the delay in receiving the scout reports was caused by a riding accident. One of the detachment’s men had been thrown from his horse, and their commander had gotten lost trying to find a quicker way back to the aid station. The enlisted man had died somewhere along the way, regrettable, but hardly cause for alarm. The other scout reports all indicates the Serbians were not pursuing closely after the fighting earlier, though there had been some skirmishes between the cavalry screen and their opposite numbers in Serbian 2nd Army. At the end of the day, Scheuchensteül was relieved that nothing more had gone wrong; and his very much hoped that the armies facing the Russian juggernaught were doing better than his own command.


DIEU, LOTHARINGEN
21 AUGUST 1914


The French Army had held Dieu for little more than a day and now it was in danger of losing it. On the 20th of August, after allowing the French to penetrate deeply into German territory, Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria had launched his counterattack with Sixth Army. First the advancing French had run headlong into prepared defences where the French units had been torn to shreds by massed machine-gun and artillery fire as they advanced in column with the bayonet. But this time the Germans had not fallen back after inflicting casualties on the French.

This time, from the moment the French charges had been halted under the thunder of the guns and the clatter of the maxims, grim men in feldgrau had risen up from behind cover and, firing their excellent Mauser rifles with great rapidity, gone on the counterattack. They were supported against the French light artillery by the action of their own 10.5cm howitzers massed from all the corps and the Army's artillery concentrations, and in counterbattery firing the 105's showed their excellence.

France's commanders had not been expecting this. Mulhouse had fallen to them, and today the horses of the French army had drunk in the Rhine. The Army of Alsace was advancing rapidly against Colmar in the face of a single German division of men raised from the area, which was falling back and not attempting to contest it; the rest of the German forces had already been driven back. At the same time, the vigorous attack of First Army by Dubail was across the River Sarre and threatening to cut a gap between Strasbourg and Rupprecht's own army further west. In that sense the attack came as a total surprise.

It was launched with a fury that sent the French reeling at once. By 1700 hours the French were within a general retreat before the advance of Sixth Army, and particularly in the Dieu area the Germans were rapidly making up their lost ground. In the same way, the French Fifth and Third armies of Lanrezac and Ruffey had faced unexpectly stiff resistance as they approached Thioville and Metz, and there was a stern and confused fight developing in the forests of southern Luxembourg as Fifth Army under Lanrezac pushed on into that country only to find great masses of German troops concealed among the woods, where their prepared machinegun and artillery emplacements mowed down the French, so visible in the forest in their bright red and blue uniforms.

So whereas the situation in Alsace appeared to be a great victory, and Colmar was surely soon to fall into French hands, in the space of a single morning the situation in Lorraine and Luxembourg had been transformed completely. Joffre was not worried, though: he calmly reviewed the news, and noted the success of Dubail. Even if the other attacks failed, if Dubail broke through the Germans would be outflanked and not merely Alsace-Lorraine would be recovered, but the German position in much of the Rhineland would be threatened. Even by the next morning the danger was not recognized.

The full magnitude of Rupprecht's counteroffensive was not yet at that time clear to anyone except those upon the ground. And there it was far more serious than Joffre by the dawn of the 21st understood. To the men on the ground, however, it was a struggle of life or death as the artillery rained down and the Germans relentlessly advanced in the counterattack, with all of the courage of the French, and considerably more dexterity. Taking cover, rising and charging, machineguns in close support, it all combined. The artillery and the machineguns in particular served to strip the French from their own support.

Peguy's 276e Regiment had been resting after the taking of Dieu on the 19th. Now it was being pressed into service to defend the area as the regiments which had advanced beyond it retreated in disorder. Charles Peguy himself was now effectively the Captain of a whole Company, when he had been in the service for a very short time. The Germans were coming on, on the counterattack, and after taken Dieu the day before he intended to hold it; the blood of his men had been invested here and he was not going to see it lost after that had happened. It was French soil, and it would stay French.

No trenches were dug; it was not the French way, and anyway Peguy had not been taught any tactics for entrenchment. Instead he simply had his men lay prone in the tall grass and wait as the vicious shelling dug through their ranks, until the storm of shrapnel down upon them had passed. Then the Germans came on, firing as they did, gray shapes scarcely visible through the grass.

“Company—rapid fire!” Peguy shouted, infurtiated at his own position in cover; but his men were also laying prone, and so he stood it as they fired desperately, reloaded, and continued to fire, as the artillery moved on to smash at other portions of the regimental front.

Countless men in gray fell down before them, dead or wounded, and waves could be seen rising up and advancing, passing elsewhere to get to grips with the French units on the outskirts of the city. Waves rose up against them as well, and the men were shot down in fury as though they did not exist. But they were coming close, and closer, and there were more and more of them and Lieutenant Peguy realized that his men were wavering, that they were not prepared to face that charge.

But I am! His thoughts ran, spasmodically, desperate and intense. If his men faced the Germans at close range, laying down prone, they would flee rather than fight so disadvantaged, not standing on their feet as men; yet if they stood to fire they would be slaughtered. It was natural, then, that he chose the third way, and the absolute madness of it in these circumstances mattered not as he found the resolution in himself to provide the example and give the order.

“Fix bayonets!”

The men along the line wondered, as they saw the Germans coming on, closer and closer, still, at the madness of their exhuberent volunteer of a commander. But they obeyed, and the cold steel was affixed to their Lebels. Still the Germans came on, and the men fired on, not having been told to stop.

From the moment that Charles Peguy was sure that the men were ready, there was nothing more than to put his plan into action. He rose up, in clear view of the Germans, and drew his sword. “Up and forward!” He twirled his sword above his head and thrust the point right at the Germans as bullets flashed all around him, upon every side. “Up and forward, men of France, that you shall prove to your fatherland that you are not cowards!” He ran forward himself, without hesitation, at his own words.

With this example the company rose up as one single whole into the torrent of the fire of the advancing Germans, into the hail of bullets that felled a half-dozen of their number in the first heartbeat. Somehow their madly brave Lieutenant was not felled, and with this example they unhesitatingly charged with the bayonet straight into the mass of the advancing Germans, expending the ammunition in their small magazines as they did so but not halting to reload.

In a moment they met with the Germans. Bayonets plunged into flesh as bullets were fired at such a close range as to singe the clothing of men even as they tore through their bodies. Lieutenant Peguy was himself confronted by a young man; he had to fumble for his pistol, having forgotten to draw it, and the abandoned the effort and defended himself with his sword. The strappling lad cried out in German as he thrust with his bayonet, and the poet, possessed by the fire in his soul, skittered to the side but nonetheless felt the blade tear through cloth—but not flesh. Peguy's sword fell upon the man—no the boy—and he did not feel a trace of regret at the red blood that flowed. This was his sacred duty; the sacred duty of every man stretching back to the warriors of Homer.

Then in a blurred moment of confusion it was over, of bayonet thrusts and rifle-butts bashed into heads, of blood and gut and brain matter released back to the earth, of the passion in the hearts of men quenched forever by the matching fire in their foes. The Germans retired, falling back against their charge of the bayonet. But as the heat and the passion of the event fell and Peguy was overtaken suddenly with a throbbing headache, and immense tiredness, he realized that all around them they were alone, and in the distance, there was only gray. “Fall back to the town!” He ordered, and he was the last to go.

As he did, he realized to his horror and dismay that he was no longer the commander of a company, even an understrength one. The number of his men who still stood were scarcely greater than a platoon, and thus, in two days, he had gone from a platoon commander and back to one, by the carnage of this battlefield. His men fell back to their positions on the edge of Dieu, and they held them for another fifteen minutes. Then a dispatch runner arrived, with dreadful news—the regiment was falling back on every side, and if they did not retreat now they would be cut off and lost. Only Peguy's company had held, and they had paid in casualties to more than half their number for the distinction.

Great stuff. That last charge of the French..reading up on Sharpe?
Thanks for the map refernces.

Stuart Mackey wrote:Great stuff. That last charge of the French..reading up on Sharpe?
Thanks for the map refernces.

No, but rather historical incidences in which such things actually happened in the early parts of WWI--I don't think people quite understand just what the French "Cult of the Attack" really meant and the sort of discipline and aggression and courage it required of the soldiers.

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:

Stuart Mackey wrote:Great stuff. That last charge of the French..reading up on Sharpe?
Thanks for the map refernces.

No, but rather historical incidences in which such things actually happened in the early parts of WWI--I don't think people quite understand just what the French "Cult of the Attack" really meant and the sort of discipline and aggression and courage it required of the soldiers.

Indeed. Its been a few years since I have looked at the early WW1 battles and tactics. I think you have done quite well with it so far, and I look forward to the next chapter.

Stuart Mackey wrote:
Indeed. Its been a few years since I have looked at the early WW1 battles and tactics. I think you have done quite well with it so far, and I look forward to the next chapter.

Thank you kindly.

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Three

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell

SABAC, SERBIA
AUGUST 23rd, 1914


Mounds of dirt rapidly grew as the men of the 17th Brigade cut a line of hasty entrenchments out of ground near the village of Sabac, which following the retreat out of the Jadar and Macva region and the disasters along the Drina river in Bosnia was the only foothold left in Serbia to the KuK Armee. The men of infantry regiments 91 and 102 had been told that units in the XIII Korps would be taking over the defense of the area. When that corps had been tied up with Serbian Third Army on the other side of salient, they were told that the 21st Landwehr division would have the front. Now that the 21st had been decisively beaten by elements of the Serbian Second Army, the men of the 9th division were once more committed to block the advance of the enemy. They were tired and attrited by the actions on the Cer ridge, but their backs were to the Sava and any Serbian breakthrough could precipitate a disaster.

Infantry regiment 102 was deployed in the center of the defensive line established by 17th brigade, and maintained contact with infantry regiment 73 of the 18th brigade on its left. It held the road into Sabac and so did not have the advantages of terrain in its defense; in compensation the division had deployed two reserve machine-gun detachments with the regiment, and the field artillery brigade had brought up a division of guns, providing direct support from twelve 8cm field pieces. The machine guns were modern water-cooled Schwarzlose designs, but the field pieces were obsolescent pieces made primarily of brass with only a steel lining in the interior in order to save money. A further division of excellent Skoda field howitzers was available to 9th division but was involved principally in counterbattery fire to suppress the Serbian guns.

Morale among the unit was on a fine knife’s edge. The regiment had suffered heavily in the fighting on the Cer ridge and was looking forward to returning the favor from a good position. The seeming pointlessness and futility of the campaign had however had a negative impact on much of the private soldiers. The surviving NCOs and junior officers looked about nervously as the men grumbled about the high command; that the regiment had as its Oberstinhaber, the titular “commander” for whom it was named, Oskar Potiorek only made the situation worse. But their work left the soldats busy and occupied, and they were accomplishing it with such speed and relish as to reassure everyone of their remaining fighting spirit. The better sergeants and lieutenants nonetheless found themselves encouraging the men to dig in deeper and to prepare for combat, giving rousing speeches or brusque commentaries on how the 102nd Regiment would rout the Serbs. The mainly Czech soldiers responded best to appeals to personal revenge given by the seasoned NCOs, while the speeches on duty and loyalty by the officers largely fell flat.

Hauptmann Eduard Kotulek walked along the section of front assigned to his company, stopping to commend individual soldiers acting with alacrity and to encourage on those of his command lagging behind the rest. They were more individual fighting positions than a line of trenches as such; he looked with relief back from the line, somewhat, where a pile of sandbags provided a shield of sorts for one of the precious machine guns. His riflemen would keep the enemy at bay, but having that weapon to command the approaches to them was worth at least an extra platoon. Some of his fellow commanders had questioned the orders to dig in, objecting that it would make pressing home a counterattack at bayonet point more difficult. The captain had been blasé about the matter, though; their orders called for them to hold Sabac, nothing more, and risking the necessary for the superfluous was what had gotten 5th Army into this Serbian mess to begin with.

Kotulek noticed on his sergeants working with a squad of infantry to construct a more elaborate set of field entrenchments, and was pleased at the initiative so displayed. He approached, though none of the soldiers heard him, wrapped up as they were in satisfying the belligerently expressed demands of the NCO.

“Excellent work, Feldwebel” he praised, and alerting them to the presence of their company commander.

The sergeant turned around immediately and executed a sharp salute. Most of the rest of the squad turned about quickly, dropping shovels and bayonets as they did so. The sergeant delivered a sharp kick to the leg of one soldier beside him who failed to do so. Hauptmann Kotulek returned their salutes casually. “Keep up the good work, soldiers. The enemy is going to approach shortly, and your preparations may mean the difference between victory and defeat. Feldwebel… Smaczeny, isn’t it?”

The sergeant nodded. “Yes sir.”

“If you could spare a few moments…”

The sergeant spoke softly but firmly to the privates near him, and then hoisted himself onto the bank outside the trench line. “How may I be of service, sir?”

Kotulek observed the NCO closely. He was older, probably one of the long service careerists that were the backbone of the army. The captain quickly came to the impression that the sergeant’s observations would be quite worthwhile. “I was wondering where you came up with the idea for organizing your squad to produce this more elaborate structure of entrenchments.”

Smaczeny looked a bit reluctant to speak, at first. Finally he shrugged his shoulders. “I stole it from the Serbs. When we were fighting on the ridges I noticed how they dug in well and good. We captured a few prisoners and I asked one of them about it. He claimed they picked it up from the Russians. Whether it’s true or not, I figured it was a good idea to dig in like they had. It was damned hard to dig them out, after all.”

The Hauptmann smiled in good humor. “Nothing to be ashamed of, Feldwebel. Entrenching like this is mentioned in our tactical manuals, but I haven’t seen it used before. Now that you have reminded me of it, I am going to order the rest of the company to dig in the same manner. Hopefully the Serbs will grant us enough time for that.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” the sergeant began, “but the Serbs haven’t exactly been in the habit of giving us much of anything except bullets and shells.”

“True, true,” Kotulek conceded. “But this time we will be doing unto them. Fight well, sergeant.”

It was an obvious dismissal, and the sergeant saluted again before jumping back down into his trenches to take over direction of the action once more. Kotulek spent the next hour spreading the word to entrench as groups in continuous lines. The time passed quickly, and the sun rose in the sky to its highest point almost without anyone noticing. The company found time to set up relays to provide hot meals for lunch, sent in relays by squads before returning to their positions. It was the early afternoon before the first Serbian shells began landing near the trench line. Following the instructions of their NCOs the soldiers of the company huddled down in the trenches, secure from all but the most unfortunate of direct hits. One landed in the trenches of a squad from the first platoon, and for a sickening few moments sharp cries of anguish and pain resounded across the company’s front.

The artillery barrage lifted within an hour as Austrian guns began pouring fire across the trenches at unseen Serbian batteries. The company could hear the rapid-fire shelling of the field batteries as the enemy began approaching in earnest. A wave of Serbian infantry in their olive-green uniforms advanced at the double-step on the Austrian positions, seeming to stagger at moments when shells landed among them but otherwise advancing, bayonets gleaming in the sun. At five hundred meters the machine gun behind the company opened fire, its high pitched braaack-braaack-braaack sound of fire breaking through the normal din of artillery and scattered rifle fire. The front rank of advancing Serbians seemed to collapse and the ordered lines of advance broke down to isolated clumps of men. The artillery fire from the Austrian battery in the sector increased in intensity as the Serbians presented them with static targets. The men of Kotulek’s company began firing on them from their positions in the trench line, adding sustained volleys of rifle fire to the murderous scene.

Serbian officers and sergeants, realizing the danger of their position, moved up and urged the clumps of men to advance towards the Austrians. Most followed their officers as they waved the men onward; there was no cover to be had, so they attempted to rush the trenches as quickly as possible. The machine gun and accurate rifle fire exacted a terrible toll on the Serbians, but they kept coming, and their momentum carried them into the line of entrenchments. Fierce fighting occurred between the men of the company and their attackers, and often a shovel or knife proved more useful than the extremely long Mannlichers with their bayonets. Captain Kotulek fired off the available ammunition in his pistol leading a counterattack on part of the trenches with a few scratch reserves, and made use of his sword more than once. As the fighting wore on, though, the Serbians eventually decided that they had had enough. The appearance of the captain and the rallying effect he had on the men of the company was the breaking point, and the Serbian forces cleared out of the trenches and fled.

Afterwards, inquiring of the fate of Sergeant Smaczeny, a Zügführer in his squad was brought before the Captain. He informed the captain that the sergeant had been shot in the head by an enemy rifleman while leading a section of men to chase out a Serbian party in position to enfilade the local trench line. After reorganizing the company and reporting to higher headquarters, he began filling out a recommendation for the posthumous decoration of Smaczeny with the Bronze Tapferkeitmedaille. A pile of other work related to finishing up the affairs of soldiers killed in the engagement awaited his attention.

The attack on his company had been beaten off at a not-unacceptable price. The result for the rest of 9th Division was largely the same, though Corps headquarters had had to release a reserve regiment of the Marschbrigade to counterattack a breach in the lines of the 21st division. The fighting had worn out both sides for the time being, making the retention of a foothold in Serbia by the Austrian military a victory, but far from a decisive one.


BERLIN, GERMANY
24 AUGUST 1914


Erich von Falkenhayn, the Prussian Minister of War, had the unenviable task of updating Kaiser Wilhelm on the status of the German Armies on all their operational fronts. He had just gotten off the phone with Motlke, and before that he had been speaking to Von Bulow, the commander in the West. Now it was his duty to report on the operations to the Kaiser. One thing, at least, was made easy. The Kaiser was sufficiently excited to receive the report that he had come to the Prussian War Ministry himself.

Von Falkenhayn had been extremely dubious of Von Motlke's change of plans to the east. It had all begun in 1912, when data provided by the Austrians indicated that instead of the predicted thirty-eight days required for Russian mobilization, the Russians would actually require sixty days to mobilize. It would seem that this would guarantee the success of the Schlieffen Plan, but the sheer magnitude of difficulties the Russians had in mobilization made something else tempting appear: The chance that the Schlieffen plan could be executed after Russian Poland had been overrun by the German Army and a firm defensive front established on the line consisting of the Niemen, the Bug, and between them, the fortress of Brest-Litovsk.

As it turned out, their predictions about the mobilization time of the Russian Army had been totally wrong, and now Moltke was forced to improvise, to meet and try to defeat the Russian armies in the field now. So far it was going well; yet Falkenhayn had his doubts that this course would continue. To the Kaiser, however, they would be voiced in only the most subtle of ways.

What Falkenhayn had managed to do is, by getting the meeting held at the Prussian War Ministry, force Admiral Tirpitz to come to him rather than the other way around; the satisfaction of seeing the fork-bearded Admiral striding in behind him somewhat made up for the task of having to manage the Kaiser. On the other hand, it also brings to mind His Majesty's little 'scheme' which has been foisted upon us.

The two officers stood at the table, a small number of aides behind them, in a hardly-companionable silence. There was no point in sitting; the Kaiser, as expected, arrived quite quickly for the meeting. “Admiral, General,” he said graciously enough, an intense expression on his face, so given as it was to vivid gestures and emotion.

He only waited a second before asking an eager question—to Tirpitz. “Admiral, I am very interested in hearing an update on the progress of the Vistula expedition.”

Tirpitz managed to avoid smirking; Falkenhayn was not pleased, though he'd half-expected that the Kaiser would bring up the topic immediately.

“Your Majesty,” Tirpitz offered graciously. “The expedition is, as expected, proceeding most slowly. I would remind Your Majesty that it was stated when you proposed the expedition that the mine threat would force an advance scarcely greater than, and sometimes less than, a walking pace, and that even with the armour of these ships the Russian fortress artillery would present severe dangers.”

“Yes, yes, I recall all of that; yet it's working, is it not? The ships are advancing in supporting order, we have lighters out positioned to screen for mines, and the accompanying flanking parties on the shore of the Vistula have kept up?” The Kaiser's expression was one of the most intense interest, for he fancied himself quite the naval tactician though his actual skill was at best described as lacking.

“That is correct, Your Majesty, in every detail. But even so it is particularly slow-going through the shallow areas. The channels in those areas are very narrow, and the water is at such levels in August—it will go lower, your Majesty, and quite possibly strand the vessels until next spring—that the groundings are frequent even with all these measures taken and constant soundings. And of course the Russians have placed improvised mines in the channel on several occasions, and we must now use lighters to sweep for these, lest another of the ships be damaged and forced to be beached to avoid blocking the channel, as the Hagen was three days ago.”

Falkenhayn listened in distate. The whole crazed expedition had ultimately involved stripping an ersatz landsturm division from the western front and combining it with brigades taken from the garrisons of Posen and Königsberg and some heavy artillery, and combining it with a large number of requisitioned river craft, in an effort to bring the eight old Siegfried coastal defense ships (along with two elderly aviso's chosen solely because of their shallow draft) up the Vistula to attack Warsaw. The Kaiser had insisted on it and then that bastard Tirpitz had gone and supported him, to the point of supporting the note to Britain, all to save his precious battleships from the risk of a close blockade of France (which coincidentally was the only thing they were good for in Falkenhayn's mind).

“Very well,” Wilhelm said at last, seeming somewhat discouraged. “I was hoping the advance would be quicker; our sea power should be just as capable on rivers as a rule. You do not forsee any problems with the ships reaching Warsaw?”

“Your Majesty,” Tirpitz answered after a moment. “I do not think, as I have stated before, that they can be progressed save by great difficulty, and the use of lashed barges to reduce their draft, further than the confluence of the Bug and the Vistula. Fortunately, there is an admirable target for their 240mm rifles there—the Fortress of Novo Georgievsk, the most heavily fortified point in Russian Poland. Should our armies fail to cross the Bug further east I am certain that Novo Georgievsk can be reduced by the ships' arrivals and allow for a quick assault on Warsaw.”

Tirpitz had reasons to encourage the Kaiser, of course—the idiotic expedition was his fig leaf to cooperation with the Army, which had wanted the navy to blockade France and bombard the French coast. Tirpitz did not want to risk his ships to the hordes of French torpedo boats when he still believed they would be needed against Britain. So he had eagerly supported the addition to the note to London affirming that German ships would not transit the English Channel, and then backed the Kaiser's lunatic idea to prove that the navy was participating in the offensive operations. As a matter of fact the ships were, after a week, only at Wloclawek on the Vistula and taking their good time to reduce it before moving on. An expedition undertaken strictly on account of political manoeuvring is never pressed as hard as one which has a practical use.

“What of the reports from Spee, then?”

“He is proceeding against French possessions in the south Pacific, Your Majesty; after the reinforcement of the Bismarcks and New Guinea with two battalions of Chinese colonial troops we have not yet heard of his disposition, though the ultimate purpose of his operations is to take Tahiti, and, if additional troops can be provided, New Caledonia. Ultimately it would be my hope, Your Majesty, to get at least one of our battlecruisers into the Pacific to support him after the raid on the French West Indies is completed.”

“That would be an excellent opportunity to secure a greater colonial Empire. More's the pity about the Togoland,” he added after a moment—it had fallen to French colonial forces a few days ago. “Can we resupply Cameroun?”

“There is a plan being drawn up for resupply to take place via our liners in America carrying necessary freight—including arms for raising more native levies, if possible—escorted by a battlecruiser. It will take some time, however, and we have little control over the defence of Cameroun.”

“Very well. General von Falkenhayn?” The Kaiser's look was considerably less pleased—he had, after all, already heard about the fact that the day before the city of Colmar in Alsace had fallen to the French.

“You are already aware of the fall of Colmar,” Falkenhayn replied, deciding to get that out of the way first. “French forces continue to advance north through Alsace, and there is now nothing more than screening forces between them and Strasbourg—the city's guns will see action, though the Crown Prince's reserves are positioned to form a line which will keep the city from having to stand a siege. Fortunately, the situation elsewhere has changed dramatically.”

Von Falkenhayn smiled grimly, then. “Though Bulow's 2nd Army lost the Guard Corps to Von Kluck, the two ersatz landsturm corps he received in replacement have performed ably enough. His counterattack in the north has thrown the French back in general disarray toward Verdun. Mars-la-Tour and Conflans have been taken and Etain will soon fall. Von Bulow, however, does not intend to press against Verdun; he understands that his offensive is necessarily limited due to the presence of a French reserve Army which is certainly being committed even now.

“His Highness the Crown Prince is however, as stated, in a much more severe position.”

The Kaiser looked on with a first real look of grimness; it was his son's Army, after all. “I know his men have been driven out of Colmar but what is the rest of this situation of which you speak?”

“French First Army is on the verge of breaking through at Sarrebourg. If French First Army succeeds in taking Sarrebourg, the Crown Prince's Army will be cut off around the Fortress of Strasbourg from the rest of the front. Despite the reinforcement of one ersatz corps and ersatz division each to his Army, he remains outnumbered at least two to one and on poor defensive terrain by the forces pressing against him.”

“There are certainly measures being taken to relieve his Army?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Crown Prince Rupprecht has been counterattacking aggressively against the French Army facing him; they are now retreating toward Nancy. He hoped to take the city but Von Bulow, recognizing the situation, has ordered him to pivot to the east from the gates of Nancy rather than try to press home an assault, and attack into the flank of French First Army. Rupprecht already outnumbered the French forces which were attacking him over the past weeks, and those attacks several attrited them while his own forces have not suffered so great of casualties; he is thus in a prime position to devote a fair position of his strength to a flanking attack on the French First Army in the Vosges, while the rest of his army forms a defensive line inside French soil on the river Meurthe.”

“Crown Prince Rupprecht's flanking maneouvre should be executed immediately.” The Kaiser amended a moment later: “If practical.”

“It will certainly be done as soon as practical,” Falkenhayn agreed, though that means practical for the maximum military advantage, “Now, Your Majesty, to the rest of the Eastern Front situation?”

“Certainly, General.”

“I am pleased to report that our 4th Army has been engaged in a battle around the Polish town of Osowiec against what appears to be the better part of two corps. These have been entirely routed and destroyed; nine thousand prisoners taken along with the artillery, and the rest of the Russians scattered. This forces appears to have been the right wing of the Russian Second Army, and its destruction leaves the path to Bialystok wide open for 4th Army.”

“How are we faring against the rest of Second Army?”

“I fear, Your Majesty, that the task of defeating Second Army has become difficult. 7th Army is pressing it very hard but the Russians are succeeding in retreating across the River Narev, with about three corps holding the Rozan-Ostrolenka area and points further northeast. General von Kluck, however, is pressing hard against the left wing of the Russian Second Army, a force of about the same size as the force that 4th Army destroyed; Moltke believes that a crossing of the Narev might be seized very soon. This will at least again force the retreat of Second Army.”

“What of the north, then, General?”

“Russian First Army has been forced by the flanking attack of our 9th Army to fall back upon the town of Simno, where extensive lakes afford a decent defensive perimeter without having to resort to a retreat behind the Niemen; they are, however, standing firm there. Moltke is trying to bring up 3rd Army from the south to form the right flank of the attack against this position, but there is some difficulty in traversing the Augustow forest even along an established rail-line. To deal with the danger of First Army retreating behind the Niemen he has dispatched the Eastern Front's General Headquarters cavalry reserve in a thrust against Kovno—all four cavalry corps.”

“Eleven divisions of cavalry? Splendid!” The Kaiser was looking very bright again. “Just the sort of thing that cavalry should be used for—grand encirclement from the flanks enmasse. It is a position worthy of my taking personal command.”

Falkenhayn hoped that he hid the instinctive wince at that comment. “Your Majesty, to take command of a mere Army in the field—an ersatz Army which would have to be formed to handle your direction of those cavalry corps, I might add—you would end up under the authority of General von Moltke, which would be unacceptable to the Imperial Dignity.”

“Ah, ah, you are right General von Falkenhayn, but it is still a pleasant thought. Very well. Keep me updated as the situation progresses, gentlemen; that is all.”


BUCHAWA, POLAND
AUGUST 24th, 1914


Cavalry patrols were pushing out more aggressively now as First Army groped about trying to find contact with the enemy. Radio interceptions and decryption efforts seemed to indicate that Russian Fourth Army, previously between the First and the key objective of Lublin, was withdrawing to the north. The commander of First Army, General der Kavallerie Viktor Dankl, had insisted on some more tangible confirmation of the Russian movements before he committed to a rapid lunge at Lublin. That meant the 7th Uhlan Regiment, among the other cavalry formations available to First Army, was ordered to push ahead until it ran into Russians, hopefully then to take prisoners.

Dust clouded up behind the command group of Rittmeister Borek’s command group as the mounted unit pushed forward. So far, today, as yesterday, there had been no sign at all they were advancing deep into enemy territory towards a critical rail connection. It had been a fair tour of a fair land and had stoked enthusiasm among the Polish elements of the regiment, but it had also become rather boring. Borek shifted in his saddle uncomfortably; the urge to action, to do something, was even beginning to affect him. The dreams of a united Poland were pleasant, nor did he have any particular reason to be eager to die for the Habsburgs, but the situation was becoming… irksome. He was about ready to order a halt and perhaps spend the rest of the day hunting in some nearby woods when one of the patrols emerged into sight. They were trotting slowly, and as they approached Borek could make out a few bedraggled figures on foot strung out between the horsemen.

The Stabswachtmeister in charge of the patrol had evidently been directed to the location of the captain’s group, and so Borek pushed aside the prospect of finding deer or boar to deal with the matter at hand. He indicated the group should meet the patrol, and started off at a measured trot. The two groups met halfway, where the patrol halted and assumed a salute. Borek returned the gesture with studied ease. “Stabswachtmeister Poborski, I trust you have important news.”

The sergeant pointed at the men on foot, whom Borek looked over cautiously. Their light green uniforms were coated over in a layer of dust, and their faces and hands were streaked with grime. The cut of the uniform was obviously Russian. “Indeed so, sir. We bagged ourselves a couple of prisoners. They were among a group of stragglers on the side of the road we ran down.”

Borek whetted his lips. This was rather more like it. “Did you make contact with a main body of Russian forces?” There was eagerness in his voice, now.

Poborski shook his head reluctantly. “We didn’t, sir. This group had dropped off behind the rearguard, and they may have been deserters. These two were Poles and shouted their surrender after we had hacked down the rest of their unit, or group. I felt it was more important to get them to higher headquarters than to continue the pursuit.”

His Rittmeister mulled over the situation a bit before reaching a reluctant conclusion. “You were correct, Poborski. And you have my congratulations. Let us see what these men have to say.”

With that, he turned his gaze from the sergeant to his captives, and switched his tongue from the army standard German to aristocratic Polish. “Your war is over, gentlemen. Why don’t you tell us what we need to know, and you will pass on to a prisoner of war camp. There will be comfortable beds and full provisions for you. If you are truly Poles, you owe the Tsar nothing.”

One of the men looked suspiciously at Borek, apparently put on edge by his accent. “We owe the Germans nothing either, whatever you high and mighty nobles say. You turned your coats during the partition and left us commoners to rot, and now fight among yourselves for the oppressors whose boots you lick. The only true path to the development of the Polish people is through the proletariat.”

The man’s attitude angered Borek, so he leaned over from his saddle and slapped the insolent prisoner hard across his face. “Another one of those yid Communards working in a steel factory before the Russians conscripted you, eh?” He sneered openly now at the socialist. “You will find that true Poles pay no attention to the mendacious drivel you vermin spout.” Borek challenged the second man with a glance. “What about you? Are you another Jew-loving atheist bastard?”

The second prisoner shrugged. “Sir, I am an honest carpenter from Zamosc. The Russians conscripted me at the beginning of August. I just want to go home.”

Borek nodded in satisfaction with the man’s attitude. “You don’t need to worry about getting killed for the Russians now. You’ll be taken to a prisoner of war camp. After we finish off the Kacep you will probably be paroled. What unit were you with and what were you last doing.”

“I was in Ivanov’s company,” the prisoner replied, “and that was part of some regiment or other. I don’t really know much about that. We were in a Fourteenth Corps. Our last orders were to march rapidly on the road to Lublin and north. The pace was killing me, so I guess I didn’t risk much by take leave.”

“No, I suppose you didn’t,” Borek responded drolly. Behind his carefully controlled expression he placed the information. Fourteenth Corps was part of the Russian Fourth Army. The prisoner more or less confirmed the information that General Dankl was seeking. He decided then and there to send the Stabswachtmeister on to headquarters, and pulled out a pad to scribble orders on.

“I want you to take these prisoners to the Oberst as quickly as you can, Stabswachtmeister,” he ordered, as he finished writing up his dispatch. He handed the page to Poborski. “Quickly now. We need you out in the field as soon as you can get back.”

The sergeant saluted, and spurred his horse into a gentle trot. The prisoners, and the rest of the patrol, began moving as his horse set a faster past. It would be a hard grind for the prisoners on foot, but nothing they could not handle. It allowed Borek to claim credit for delivering the first prisoners to confirm the situation to Dankl, though only by a few hours. By the end of the day, First Army had new orders; they were to push to Lublin as rapidly as possible.

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Four.

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.

PULTUSK, POLAND
25 AUGUST 1914


Heavy artillery rained down upon the fortress of Pultusk. Here, and to points north and east, the better part of Von Kluck's 1st Army. 1st Army had entered Russia first, on the 16th of August, and in nine days it had advanced as far as this famed town on the Narev, defended by a reasonably modern fortress. It was naturally the place to whence the efforts of Von Kluck's army should be directed, and besides that, naturally the place to whence Artamanov would retire with I Corps and the 15th Division which he had control over as a matter of necessity, and it was these forces, one corps and one division, which must hold the whole 320,000 men of Von Kluck's First Army.

They had the fortress of Pultusk as their aide, and little else. The Narev River was fordable here, and Pultusk had risen up to control the trade across the ford, and with it the fortress to defend the place militarily. The full might of the largest Army of the forces of the German Empire might be held here for only as long as the guns of the fort covered the ford, and this Von Kluck well understood. There had been of course no time for the Russians to prepare the fortress at all. It was very old, having been modernized several times, and equipped with obsolescent blackpowder artillery of Russo-Turkish war vintage, but in great quantities.

Von Kluck could wait to attack until the heavy artillery attached to 1st Army was brought up, and thereby reduce the fort of Pultusk. But that would take precious time, and he did not think he had it. Even now, 7th Army was viciously engaged all along the Narev with Samsonov's Second Army, which was holding at Ostrolenka and Rozan and thus preventing 7th Army from effecting a crossing of the river even as vigorous rear-guard actions were fought by some units still on the north bank to allow the rest of his force to escape, as it was so far succeeding in doing against the 7th Army, being as it was scarcely 35% of the strength of 1st army.

Artamanov was a paranoid, timid general and his main preoccupation had been avoiding getting his forces put under the commander of Samsonov, the commander of 2nd Army, but in this he had been finally overruled and Samsonov had seen to it that his position along the Narev was good, though there had simply been no time to prepare serious fortifications. I Corps had advanced far enough that the retreat across the Narev had been a desperate affair and there had been scarcely enough time to blow the bridge with the Prussian Uhlans nipping at the heels of the corps.

Pultusk, both the fort and the town of rather more than 20,000 people, was on an island in the middle of the Narev where it broadened and became shallow; there was thus extensive room to launch an assault on the island from every angle on the northern bank of the river, and thence to cross over from it to the far shore where the Russians, trusting in the fortress and the defences of the island, had made their defensive priorities the least, strengthening the other parts of the river where a crossing might be made first of all. To Von Kluck it was a matter which must be struck head-on and swiftly; so that is exactly what he did. The Prussian Guard Corps was ordered to take Pultusk by coup de main.

Artillery was hauled up through the night, both light field-pieces and howitzers. The artillery of four corps was focused on Pultusk; four regiments of 10.5cm howitzers blasted down upon the island—plus more divisional batteries in turn--and even more of the lighter 77mm pieces were arrayed on the shore of the Narev, pounding at the island as the Prussian Guards pushed their way along the river. A total of 288 10.5cm and 432 7.7cm guns were concentrated on Pultusk. The majority of the Prussian Guard on the attack were marching across the ford, with some commandeered boats providing an improvised diversion in the north. These had already been intercepted by a battalion of Russian field artillery and torn apart, though in unmasking itself the Russian battalion had guaranteed its own doom as the howitzers concentrated upon it. Despite all of that, a small force of men had landed from the boats and were now pinned down on the beach on the northeast part of the island, where they clung to life under a fierce and constant fire.

Artamanov's forces were in many cases understrength and lacking in their regulation numbers of machineguns and artillery. They still provided a valiant resistance as the Prussian Guards forged through the shallows of the Narev, chopping through the proud men of the Prussian Guard such that the Narev ran red with blood. Still they forged on, uniquely suited to their task: For the Prussian Guard, by an old regulation of Frederick the Great, allowed into its ranks only men who were at least six feet in height, and by this unexpected advantage it was guaranteed that at least none of the men drown under the weight of their packs, or were forced to swim, as they pressed across the river, even in the deeper spots (for the Narev was quite shallow in August).

For a while it seemed as though the attack might fail. The Prussian Guards were not dissuaded by the river, advancing in formation despite the current, pickelhaube'd heads gleaming in the pleasant summer sun as they strode through the water which was rarely more than thigh-deep. Even with the great severity of their casualties they pressed home the attack in perfect order and without a moment's hesitation. The river seemed to be a charnel house but it was not one which had stopped the Guards from carrying out their mission.

Despite all that, having gotten across the river they had to now press up into the town against the heavy fire of the defending Russians. Though these Russians were themselves under the heaviest of fire from the German 10.5cm howitzers (the field guns were now concentrating solely on the fortress, as their own troops had entered their fields of fire on the taking of the shore), they directed machine-gun fire from concealed positions and massed riflery. In this fashion they were held to the beach for twenty minutes as their numbers piled up behind them and it looked like they might be repulsed, a great mass of men in a small confined space taking extreme casualties.

The situation called for the heights of bravery, and so it was that the commander of the 5th Regiment of the Prussian Guards personally led a bayonet charge by his regiment into the town and into the teeth of the Russian machineguns. He was killed, but the attack tore a gap in the Russian defences just to the north of the fortress of Pultusk, and it was here that a young lieutenant, Otto von der Linde, who had just survived the charge, saw that the rear of the fortress was unprepared and vulnerable. At this moment he realized he must act, and he did, without hesitation and even as his men were still recovering from the shock of the charge and the close-combat.

His platoon had lost half its men killed or wounded in the crossing of the Narev and the bayonet charge of the 5th Regiment, but he did not hesitate despite his grievious numerical inferiority. The houses were cleared away from the fortress, of course, and there was open ground—it could be fatal, but as far as he could tell there were no machine-gun emplacements guarding the rear of the fort. Indeed, it seemed the greatest danger was from their own artillery pounding the fortress with such an intense fury from the massed howitzers.

“Follow me!” He shouted in a snap, and dashed forward at once, out of the cover of the town and toward the fortress, followed by his men. Other men saw that the platoon was advancing on the fortress and followed with the instinctive courage of the Prussian Guard. It was miraculous; they were not fired upon at all until the latest moment, safe when several of their own shells exploded in the area and caused casualties among the charging men. In total twenty-three men reached the fortress and it was only several old reservists, clerks or supply officers, who fired down on them with pistols most ineffectually as they charged up. The rear-facing guns of the fort, of which there were few, did not fire, and they were amongst these few pathetic defenders in a moment, who threw down their arms. With nineteen men following him and two guarding the prisoners and a wounded comrade, Lieutenant von der Linde charged on through the gun casements.

Those facing toward the town were empty. The Russians had simply not had enough time or personnel to man them. Ahead, the ancient artillery—rifled bronze pieces, pour imitations of the Krupp weapons of the 1870s—was still firing back at the crossing, trying to interdict it by the best efforts of the reservist fortress troops who manned them in limited numbers. They had no rifles to speak of; just a dozen for patrol purposes, and they were not skilled in their use. The casements of the fort had already suffered heavy damage and when Lieutenant von der Linde arrived with his men they raced through the gun batteries, seizing the men of the fort at point of bayonet. It was a magnificent thing, an incredible thing, and everyone was shouting in a confused din of many languages and contrary commands as they progressively took the fort. Fear spread, and any chance at a counterattack ceased.

“Throw down your arms! Thrown down your arms!” He shouted again and again, sometimes firing his pistol when men resisted, sword drawn as a symbol of authority, forcing the reservists in the fort to throw down their weapons even when only a few men followed him, even as the fort shuddered under the howitzer fire of their own guns. The Russians surrendered with a fear that reflected the bloodlust in Von der Linde's eyes which he did not even realize that he manifested until later reflection.

Even when the guns had ceased firing, though, the massed German artillery continued to pound the fortress. A shell unfortunately crashed down where part of Lieutenant von der Linde's party now was; two men were killed by it as it broke through the old brickwork there. Otto now raced to take the Russian flag, and indeed it was cut down in a particular haste. “Give me a flag!” He shouted; but there were no flags to be had. They had not taken any with them.

In desperation they scavenged for any kind of fabric which could be found, and in another three minutes they had hoisted up their own crude signal—a German flag made of a white shirt, a black coat, and a red pair of pants strung through in the right order and hastily raised. The firing continued for another few minutes and then slackened and died. All throughout the town the Prussian guards were now advancing, and Otto, from his vantage in the fort he had captured with less than thirty men, saw with surprise that the Life Guard Hussars Regiment was now plunging through the water of the Narev upon their horses, even as a few shots from stray pockets still holding onto the southern back cracked over their heads.

On guiding their horses up the bank of the river's northern branch, they raced passed the fortress at a full gallop before plunging into the narrow streets of the city beyond, and down a broad avenue in particular. It was here that Otto realized what they were doing; the bridge across the south branch of the Narev had not been blown to give the troops on the island a chance to retreat, and this gamble of a cavalry charge right through the crowded streets of the city was an effort to take it before it could be blown. The Hussars charged right into the press of the fleeing Russians, and as the desperate men ran for their lives and the Hussars galloped up to their rear there was naturally a compression into a dense mass in the streets. The Hussars, having no choice, began to hack their way through.

On blood-slicked cobblestone streets the Life Guard Hussars cleaved their way through the mob of the fleeing and broken Russians, until they had reached the bridge where the engineers tried to hold out long enough to let the engineers across, waiting for orders to blow it. They were to late; with the Russian troops now scattering in every direction to avoid the cold steel of the Hussars, a charge was once again possible and this swept down and over the bridge and took prisoner the engineering party in time. Immediately four regiments of Hussars and one regiment of the Guard Uhlans were sent across the bridge to bite into Artamanov's corps as great numbers of troops began to work their way across the ford of the Narev, even while the engineering battalions began to erect a series of pontoon bridges around the city and repair the bridge with its blown centre span across the northern channel of the river.

For the action of the Prussian Guard Corps on the 25th of August at Pultusk there were awarded twelve Iron Crosses, four of the First Class and eight of the Second; the Pour le Merite was awarded three times, to the commanders of the Fifth Regiment of the Guards, the commander of the Life Guard Hussars, and Lieutenant Otto von der Linde. One out of every five men involved in the attack was killed or wounded. Artamanov, on the arrival of the German cavalry, immediately began to withdraw toward Ostrow, and was pursued by Von Kluck with the utmost vigor. The Russian 15th Division, cut off from I Corps, fell back on Wyszkow on the River Bug.


SSW OF SEREJE, POLAND
25 AUGUST 1914


Massed rifle-fire crackled sudden and hot out of the woods on the northern edge of the Augustow Forest. A half-dozen Cossacks of the sotnia toppled from their saddles as the hail of 8mm Mauser fire swept over them. Then came the Hussars and Uhlans of the 3rd Army, driving a half-dozen Cossack sotnias before them with a mix of rifle-fire and steady charges of horse.

The cossacks did not stay long. They retreated to the north, their job being only to scout. They sent one sotnia quickly with the news and the rest made a quick fighting retreat. They raced to the rear on their horses, and then rapidly dismounted and met the advance of the German cavalry with a few volleys of fire, then swiftly mounted up again with the usual Cossack dexterity and once again made another retreat. In this way did the German pursuers, who had themselves sent word back of their discovery, gradually fall behind out of wariness.

At one point through the forest a railroad had been cleared. It was single-track, but with several passing sidings and broad paths and either side of it where the construction equipment had gone through, making natural roads. Otherwise the Augustow Forest was, like all the forests of the area, dense, black, impregnable. The German cavalry—the regiment in particular advancing down the railhead was the 3rd Saxon Hussars—soon encountered a more serious obstacle. The railroad tracks had been ripped up for a space of several hundred yards and dirt and chopped-down trees and rock piled up, along with trenches dug.

There was a long straight stretch of track here, indeed, a good quarter-mile long; for this was on the northern edge of the Augustow Forest and the forest here was thinning. It was the last really densely wooded place, and combined with the straight stretch of track it was perfect for the Russians to dig in. There was a single infantry regiment there, 97th General-Field Marshal Graf Sheremetev's Livonia Infantry Regiment. It was dug in well, and it actually had wire. It was supported by two batteries of 76.2mm field pieces, but only four machine-guns.

This was the furthest south and west that Rennenkampf's army still stood after the destruction of II Corps, and some of the survivors of II Corps were also dug in here; most had surrendered or simply fled through the vastness of Augustow Forest, lost. The rest of the force consisted of nine Cossack sotnias, six out screening, which were now falling back, and three in reserve. The commander of the 1st Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division was present in person, and on getting word of the Cossacks falling back, he prepared his guns.

The Cossacks soon reached a point where they could rely on the support of the artillery, and so the Russian guns opened up on the advancing 3rd Saxon Hussars. Under the barrage of twelve rapid-fire light guns the Hussars fell back at once, suffering casualties as a hundred shells rained down a minute. At this the three reserve sotnias were ordered to counterattack, and soon a confused cavalry battle along the railroad and in the dense forest and the meadows interspersed through it here on the verge of the blackness was raging, little bands of men fighting all over on their horses with no discernable front line. Other German cavalry regiments were soon drawn in all along the line.

Before the situation became hopelessly confused, though, the 3rd Hussars had gotten a party from their headquarters back off to the rear, equipped with a signal torpedo which they lay in the track about a mile further back after a hard ride alongside the rails at full gallop. They had done it not a moment to soon, for the first of the commandeered Russian trains from the marshalling yard at Augustow was coming up, boxcars packed with soldiers and handled by the engineers of 3rd Army.

The signal torpedo exploded as the train passed over it and at once the crew began emergency braking, the soldiers cramming to peer out the doors as they looked on in nervousness and curiousity at what was happening. The commander of the regiment on this train stepped out from the first of the boxcars. “Lieutenant!” He shouted to the beardless youth who had led the signalling party. “Report!”

“Sir,” the lieutenant saluted. “We're in a hard cavalry engagement with cossacks a klick and a half ahead, and another third of a klick beyond that the Russians are dug in, regiment strength to be sure with artillery.”

“Very good. There is a train carrying three batteries twenty minutes behind us—do you have a second torpedo?”

“Yessir!”

“Plant it a quarter of a mile beyond us, and when you've stopped that train, tell them to de-train their batteries and bring them forward along the rails with the greatest haste—on the authority of the Oberst commanding the Saxon Life Guard Grenadiers Regiment!”

The lieutenant did not even think of the state of his horses as he saluted once more, filled with glorious eagerness. “At once, Sir!” He then turned to his small party: “Fall in!--at the gallop!”

As the detachment rode off, the Colonel grabbed up a few members of staff and the colour guard. “Unmask the colours!” He ordered, and then he drew his sword, running back along the train with the colour-bearer at his side, ordering each company to dismount from the cars in turn and personally insuring that they were organized into marching order. By the time he had succeeded in getting it done, the artillery train to the rear had stopped, and on his orders, was offloading. In another hour, the Saxon Life Guard Grenadiers were advancing at the double-quick down the rails, boots tramping out 160 paces a minute. From the moment the teams were hitched the guns on the train behind they pounded ahead at a full gallop, the wheels of the caissons rattling over the packed dirt and gravel.

The Cossacks were having the better of the German cavalry when, coming out of the woods as if they were ghosts were men in grey uniforms, one line firing ten rounds rapid as the second line pushed forward, and then the first advancing while the second put fire down. They came on with gaudy flags and banners of the long military tradition of Saxony, and one prominent in particular: the banner which showed they were the Life Guard Grenadiers of the Kingdom of Saxony, carried in the front rank. Under the uncertain shade of the Augustow forest in the noonday sun the Hussars and Uhlans retreated behind the infantry as they advanced sternly, driving the Cossacks before them.

Soon they reached the point where the Russian artillery was dialed in; it had already opened fire, and pressing on would mean driving into the teeth of shrapnel and machine-gun fire without the support of their own guns. The Oberst of the regiment ordered his men to prone positions where the cover of the forest was most dense, and then waited. In another hour the guns came rolling up, and fifteen minutes after that they were almost positioned to engage the Russian batteries when the Russians saw them and commenced to fire.

The artillery crews redoubled their efforts under the pounding of the twelve Russian guns, and soon the eighteen German pieces were coming into action, one after the other, firing as rapidly as they could in a counterbattery action. With the guns concentrated on each other the Oberst of the regiment did not wait any longer.

“Fix bayonets!” And with that one order, the Saxon Life Guard Grenadiers were led forward in skirmish order through the forest, the battaliosn spreading out to either side of the railroad track as artillery roared over their heads, staying clear of that straight line of death—though that applied to both sides, as the Germans proved when some Cossacks showed their heads on the line to be met by a vigorous machine-gun fire which struck down eight before the rest retreated, the twitching bodies of the pitifully dying horses left visible over the mangled corpses of their riders.

The Russians shifted their machine-guns to meet the advance, and through the confused tangle of the woods they fired them at anything which might be a man advance. The dense carpet of the woods was soon laced with the red stains pooling from the bodies of the Saxon falling, and men instinctively shifted to avoid any clearings, after the first few times they were proven to be nothing more than charnel houses papered over with soft grass.

It was perhaps another ten minutes before the Saxons had pressed forward to the point that they might come to grips with the main Russian lines at close range, and it was here that they rushed forward in the open, disdainful of loss for sake of covering the last few yards. They suffered for in corpses sent sprawling over the rotting old timbers on the forest floor, of men stacked with an almost supernatural neatness in death, of men hung up on the wire strung through the forest and on the saplings which struggled to survive in the dense tangle, and blasted through with massed rifles there.

Despite it, the Saxon Life Guard Grenadiers carried home the attack, and at point of bayonet drove the 97th General-Field Marshal Graf Sheremetev's Livonia Infantry Regiment out of their entrenchments in several places. Quickly the fighting devolved into a confused tangle of groups of men pushing against each other through the woods and brief, intense struggles at point-blank range, with the cavalry of both sides fighting on the flanks and often being shot at by their own infantry, or vice-versa.

Slowly, and at cost, the Russians were made to yield. This did not, however, speak of the full magnitude of the situation, for the Saxon Life Guard Grenadiers were simply the vanguard of the whole of 3rd Army, which was now beginning to deploy and press on ahead against the southern flank of Rennenkampf's First Army that was concentrated around Sereje. And so it was that Rennenkampf's battle for survival began here, even as the battle of the Livonia regiment and the Saxon Grenadiers was ending with the setting of the sun on the end of the 25th of August.

Great stuff.

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Five.

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell

N OF WYSZKOW, POLAND
26 AUGUST 1914


Von Kluck's 1st Army divisions had attacked each on a front of a single kilometer, an immensely concentrated space with twelve fighting infantrymen to each meter of front. With screening cavalry on either flank and even considering forces kept in reserve (and the lack of the Guard Corps, which was recuperating from the casualties it had suffered in the assault on Pultusk the day before and was still in the area of the city) the attacking front had been at most sixteen kilometers. Twelve hundred guns, ten thousand cavalry, and two hundred thousand infantry assaulted Artamanov's I Corps and the 15th Infantry Division through the day, with more still in reserve.

A wedge had been forced open between I Corps and 15th Infantry division which had already been partially present at the opening of the battle, for on the seizure of Pultusk the units had lost touch and had only been trying to regain it through the night, without complete success. Finally around 1600 hours in the later afternoon the gap had become obvious to Von Kluck, and though he held back his reserve corps' infantry out of caution he did send forward its cavalry, two regiments, plus a regiment of landwehr cuirassiers and the Life Guard Hussars and the Guard Uhlans, five regiments of cavalry in total, supported by the ten battalions of Jaegers at his disposal, and twelve batteries of field guns.

These forces crashed through the gap, with the cavalry wheeling to the south and charging into the flank of the 15th Division. The Life Guard Hussars with their Death's Head helmets led the charge, initially rolling up the troops of the 15th Division before organized resistance could be achieved, aided by several machineguns which the division commander had held in reserve. These repulsed the cavalry; but the Death's Head Hussars of Prussia were not easily deterred and at the impulse of their commander, who had the day before taken the bridge of Pultusk, they charged again. This charge was also repulsed with great bloodshed among the ranks of the famed Hussars, but the scratch reserves of the 15th Division were exhausted and it retired to the southeast over the night, having lost nearly half its strength in the combat throughout the 25th and 26th.

In the meanwhile the deadlier part of the combat had been opened. All the howitzers and most of the field guns had already been engaged, but nearly a division's strength of artillery, all in field guns, had been held back. This had now been rushed through with the Jaegers, who advanced right up to the flank of I Corps and by their constant rifle fire at close range pinned down the Russians in a vicious and vigorous enfilade—supported by the machine-gun company attached to each Jaeger battalion, such that there were sixty machine-guns concentrated against the Russian flank. The last, pathetic reserve of the overstretched corps which was trying to hold back an army was sent forward to counterattack and try and reestablish the link with the 15th Division.

They counterattacked toward the south, toward the Jaegers, around the same time that the field guns had been brought into place behind them and unlimbered. Waves of men in their gray-green uniforms swarmed forward with fixed bayonets, unsupported by either artillery or machine-guns. Seventy-two 7.7cm field guns pounded them with hundreds of rounds of shrapnel a minute, fired down the iron sights of the cannon, while the sixty maxims tore through the ranks of the Russians with pitiless ferocity. It was as disastrous as any of the bayonet charges which the forefathers of these men had been into Napoleon's Grand Battery—no, surely worse. At least a thousand bodies littered the field, and perhaps twice as many. The Jaegers heartlessly advanced over them, and the caissons crushed the mortal remains of these men as they were brought forward and began to lay a desultory barrage deeper into the Russian flank.

As the sun was setting Von Kluck ordered a general attack to be pressed home all along the front most closely. In many places the troops of 1st Army broke through the Russian lines and there was now no reserve with which to push them out. Besides that, another six regiments of cavalry where attacking the northern flank of Artamanov's Corps as well, with absolutely nothing to counter them. There were Germans everywhere, and it seemed there were Russians nowhere, but in the middle, being attacked from every side.

The rear-area support troops fled. Artamanov nearly did so himself. He stayed, barely, but only until nightfall. It was nightfall which did it: The Russians held until then, they held on against the full might of Von Kluck's 1st Army until darkness. Then every man knew that his only chance at survival had come, and took it. They threw down their weapons and melted away into the darkness. Many were killed regardless, for Von Kluck was confident enough of his position to continue pressing forward even in the darkness. Many more escaped. The whole artillery train of I Corps was captured intact and nearly all the rifles; of the 15th Division a single brigade escaped, severely attrited, to the south.

That night, Von Kluck paced the simple tent which served as his temporary headquarters, his horse waiting, saddled, outside. He was waiting for a message from Motlke, and it was not coming as he had expected. Immediately on the collapse of resistance from I Corps he had sent a signal to Motlke asking for permission to left-pivot and drive toward Ostrow with the utmost speed. He was certain that he could take Ostrow before Russian 2nd Army retreated through it, and in doing so cut off three infantry corps of the Russian Army and some cavalry besides, guaranteeing their destruction in one of the great encirclements of history. He wanted it, and he wanted it bad.

He is probably in a séance taking the directions of the course of this battle from a Gypsy-woman, Von Kluck fumed to himself as he paced. Motlke's Theosophy was hardly a secret among the ranks of the Prussian nobility, and for the majority of them, being dour calvinists, it was a source of derision. Von Kluck had fancied not waiting for instructions and turning on his own initiative, but he held back, knowing the matter to important for even the commander of the largest and finest army of Germany to decide on his own.

“Sir, there's a message from GHQ,” the Oberst in command of Von Kluck's signals unit reported as turned toward the commander of 1st Army with a salute, referring of course to Großen Hauptquatier Das Deutsches Ost Heer, and thus to Motlke.

“At last,” Von Kluck muttered as he strode over. “Let me take a look at it, Oberst.”

“Of course, Sir.” The message was at once handed over, and it read:

TO: 1st ARMY HQ
RE: DIRECTION OF ADVANCE

Do not repeat do not pivot left direction Ostrow. Stop. Maintain advance direction Warsaw. Stop. Seizing the Bug River crossing at Wyszkow and establishing a firm bridgehead to the south of the Bug River remains foremost priority of 1st Army. Stop. Repeat. Stop. foremost priority. Stop. Operations against Russian 2nd Army are now under the purview of 7th and 4th Armies. Stop. Do not repeat do not pursue futher operations against Russian 2nd Army unless necessary for the completion of 1st Army's advance direction Warsaw. Stop.

Von Kluck struck his fist against his leg. The opportunity had been lost. But we shall show Moltke and his séances just how good 1st Army is; I shall have his bridgehead over the Bug by the 30th! He turned and immediately went to find his chief of staff, Generalmajor von Kuhl, to issue instructions for a pursuit by cavalry and jaegers of the Russian forces falling back on Wyszkow; he had no intention of giving them the chance to fortify the Bug crossing, and that meant overruning them before they could, regardless of the cost.


WALLIS ET FUTUNA
27 AUGUST 1914


“All sections report ready at Action Stations!”

The harsh clip of a teutonic voice echoed through the speaking tube in reply: “Achtung! Achtung! Stand by for main battery engagement. Stand by for second battery engagement.”

Two great ships nosed their way into the Bay of Mat Utu at a cautious six knots, weary of the reefs in the area. They flew the War-Ensign of the Kaiserliche Marine and their massive triple-expansion reciprocating engines sliced three screws each through the water at a steady, remorseless beat.

As the order was given, on each ship two turrets swung into position and two casemated guns of the same calibre were also trained against the target. In total, twelve 8.2in rifles dialed in on the capital of French Wallis and Futuna Islands, a tropical paradise in the southwestern Pacific. At the same time, the casemated 5.9in secondary batteries were aiming at the single French ship in the bay, the old gunboat Kersaint, anchored in shallow water behind the protection of a reef, from before the French realized the magnitude of the opposition. The little ship was one-tenth the size of one of the German armoured cruisers, and Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were supported by several other modern cruisers besides.

At the parley which had been conducted earlier in the day, the governor had refused to surrender. To avoid the risk of casualties to the crews or trying out the untested Chinese troops with a landing action on the first go, Admiral Graf von Spee resolved to conduct a brief bombardment of the town of Mata'utu.

It was a simple matter of mathematics. The town was not a moving target, and the ships themselves were scarcely moving in the pristine, clear waters of the bay, under the bright sun of August in the tropics. Two platoons of marines was waiting on the deck of the Scharnhorst in ridiculous looking huge straw hats and light gray uniforms which comprised the German idea of tropical dress for soldiers. On the Gneisenau the occupation force waited: A short company of Chinese peasants in dark gray uniforms, but wearing traditional broad round peasant hats, led by a portly Jewish merchant in his thirties from Vienna who had been in Shanghai when the war broke out and went to volunteer his services to the garrison of Tsingtao.

Since he could speak some Mandarin he had been immediately made a Captain and placed in command of one of the companies of Chinese peasants (some of whom having joined up without realizing that they were enlisting in the German army and thinking it was a work project) which had been hastily raised for occupation duties in the French pacific colonies, despite the fact that he had no prior military experience and was an Austrian, not German, subject. Still, he had went about his new career with a particular diligence, memorizing every word of the infantry officer's handbook he'd been given and drilling his men on deck whenever he was allowed.

For a long moment the sun bathed down on the men on the decks, and the ominous image of the barrels rising to eleven degrees elevation could almost be ignored. Then the order was given by the gunnery officer of first Scharnhorst and then Gneisenau, high in their positions in the fighting tops. “Fire half-salvo one!”

Half the guns of each ship roared out in anger, lobbing high-explosive shells into the vicinity of Mata'utu. The gunnery officers carefully marked the fall of the shot and made adjustments. “Fire half-salvo two!” This time the shells appeared to be on target, and the officers on the two ships did not hesitate in issuing the next order a mere moment later: “Commence independent fire—rapid!”

Already, however, the French reply had come. There were two old 3.9in coastal defence guns emplaced Mata'utu, and these fired back at the Germans defiantly. The gunboat Kersaint also commenced firing with another three 3.9in guns, and her single 5.5in main gun. Even as the Kersaint fired, though, the three 5.9 guns on each of the German armoured cruisers which could bear against her were walking their shell-splashes onto the target and then had commenced rapid fire as well.

The French 3.9in guns were firing short, but the shell splashes made the gunners on the 5.5in of the Kersaint misjudge; they fired long, and soon the two armoured cruisers were sailing through the splashes of the defensive fire as Mata'utu was quickly swathed in smoke and dust from the impacts. After scarcely two minutes of firing one shell smashed down onto the little defensive battery, killing nine men and silencing it. The Kersaint had already been hit four times and was burning, with four dead. Her 5.5in gun continued to fire, however, and one shell clipped against Scharnhorst's mainmast before crashing into the sea; a second struck her armour low in the water, doing no damage, though a falling fragment from the first of the shells lightly wounded a sailor.

At this, the French of Mata'utu, having resisted for less than six minutes, struck their colours and raised a white flag of surrender. Honour had been satisfied, at the cost of nineteen dead on the island and thirty wounded. Kersaint continued to fight for another three minutes, being hit another four times, but solely because the gunboat's gallant young commanding officer was buying enough time to for the scuttling parties to open the sea-cocks.

Then, from the Kersaint too did the white flag flutter up, even as the ship began to settle into the shallow water. The whole affair had lasted only ten minutes, but the effort at scuttling was soured from the start: In such shallow water, the contents of the Gunboat's safe could be salvaged easily enough, and the sinking had put the fires out by which the crew had tried to burn the books. These proved to have some interesting data on planned French ship movements in the Pacific, and Graf von Spee seized upon it eagerly.


BOSSAU, OST PREUSSEN
27 AUGUST 1914


General von Moltke did not rely on séances to make up his battle-plans, but he certainly considered communing with the spirit-world to be a beneficial aspect of his generalship. Since the situation today was particularly tense, he had retreated to his private suite in the Bossau Imperial Hotel which had been commandeered for his staff. Though his desire for a transcendental experience in the spirit world was genuine, part of his reclusiveness was also motived by his desire to avoid breakfast: The hotel, being in the backwoods of East Prussia and catering mostly to hunters, served a traditional German fare for breakfast which was absolutely ghastly--Probably entirely potato pancakes and grilled sheep's brain Moltke though, then pushed the image aside as an unfortunate lapse in his concentration. Like any proper German nobleman, Moltke's diet was almost exclusively French cuisine.

He receded deeper into the spirit world once more. The penumbras which holiness had placed over the true nature of things; of spirits and hidden knowledge; these things could only be pierced by those who attained a higher state of enlightenment, and it was that which he had always sought. He understood, by dint of the handed-down wisdom of ancient mystics, that this was nearly an impossible task, yet one which promised all true spiritual attainment and fulfillment in the physical world. It was also one which had given him a respectful philosophy; he studied his opponents because all actions were powered by wisdom, and it was wisdom that gave someone the moral right to strike against another thing—to know it fully, and yet still be able to bring down a mortal blow against it, was the true sign of a just cause.

Of Hungary.. He thought, strangely, and saw images of the Austro-Hungarian army in review; his mind pressed beyond this, though that the spirits had been reminding him of his allies of late was something he had not ignored. A peaceful place, in the woods, and the sound of running water. Moltke enjoyed the sensation of it, until he saw a man near him, noticed him all of a sudden, in fact. It was a man in armour, with a fine red beard, and Moltke realized at once that it must be Frederick Barbarossa. He had not seen him before, and so this must be of some significant.

“Your chevaliers have done very well this morning,” Frederick Barbarossa spoke with a hearty chuckle. “But tend to your footmen, and do not neglect your health.”

Moltke awoke at once as this message had been given to him, leaving the astral plain and his state of trance. He rose from his bed and, pulling on his uniform jacket, headed straight for operational headquarters. Along the way he was intercepted by a fresh-faced lieutenant who looked very surprised.

“Ah.. General, Sir!” The lieutenant came to attention and saluted. “There's a message for you, Sir, most urgent.”

“Kovno?” Moltke asked at once.

The Lieutenant looked very surprised. “Sir! Yes sir! It's Kovno, the cavalry has taken it.”

Just as Frederick told me! Motlke thought delightedly as he took the message and confirmed its contents. “Very good, Lieutenant. Ah.. Go see to it that the hotel staff has some breakfast brought up for me to at headquarters.” He would, despite his distate, obey Frederick's advice—no doubt he had learned some lessons from his own mortal swim.

A few minutes later Moltke arrived at headquarters after a short stroll to re-invigorate his mind. It was 0703—Third Army should have just begun its attack. “We are in for a long day, gentlemen. For all that the seizure of Kovno has done us good, we must see to it that Generaloberst von Hausen has what he needs to carry Sereje on this day.”


SEREJE, POLAND
27 AUGUST 1914


The massed artillery of the four corps of 3rd Army had rained down in torrents on the Russian entrenchments around the town of Sereje. A total of 12 x 21cm, 80 x 15cm, and 144 x 10.5cm howitzers, and 441 x 7.7cm field guns were concentrated for the barrage, the whole artillery park of 3rd Army, without exception. The bombardment had begun at 0500 hours that morning and had lasted until 0650 hours. Then the German howitzers shifted to rear-area targets and maintained fire on them for five minutes as the field guns were limbered up so that they could be brought forward to support the advancing infantry.

Fire again ceased, and two minutes later the German units were given the order to attack. Three corps and an independent brigade were attacking: XI Corps of the line army, I Saxon Corps, II Saxon Corps, and the 47th Saxon Landwehr Brigade. III Saxon Corps was the infantry reserve (in reality some of its elements were still coming up through the Augustow forest), though its artillery was also massed at the front. The cavalry was massed on the far southern flank, to the right of the Army, and had already cut the rail-line to Drusskeniki.

Great lines of Saxon troops dashed forward in the centre and on the right, with the regulars of XI Corps on the left flank. They advanced more cautiously, having learned the lesson on the Masurian lakes of charging in good order upward against entrenched Russians, a lesson most assuredly learned in blood. Their caution served them well, but the casualties were still hideous: Here the Russian machine-guns were well-supplied with ammunition and their artillery batteries had been held back clear of the front and only suffered lightly from the brief rear-area barrage of the howitzers, such that the majority of the field pieces were rolled forward upon their caissons at the instance the German attack was reported, and unlimbered along the front.

Yet the sheer numbers of the Germans were almost impossible to deal with. Three corps and one independent brigade were attacking along a mere seven-kilometer front. They were facing a single corps, and behind it Rennenkampf had a reserve of a single division for his whole army. As they had been throughout the campaign the Tsar's peasant soldiers were asked to do the impossible, and as they had each and every time, they gave their utmost to the effort.

General von Hoiningen could, it seemed, only watch in a supreme state of tenseness as his corps advanced into the attack once more. Saxons were gallant men with a long history of war, and they held up to their reputation here greatly, driving home the attack despite the casualties they suffered, alternating between finding cover and raising up to bravely rush forward into the artillery and machine-guns and rifle fire, with many torn apart for their gallant effort. But for every Russian there were three Germans, and they had much better and more powerful artillery support from their massed howitzers, which remained useful throughout and shattered every tactical reserve the Russians had.

Like Russian peasants always had, they simply held in their lines with grim, fatalistic slavic countenances, and prepared to defend their trenches by point of bayonet. In an hour they were required to, and the see-saw fighting in the trenches was waged for another two hours as the German officers watched and waited tensely, bayonet and rifle-butt and shovel all employed with as much ferocity as the crack of a bullet upon the air. At last the Russians could not hold; yet again, to their credit, they did not break and run. An orderly disengagement was somehow managed from the fighting, and though they suffered for making it, they succeeded it.

As ordered, the Germans pressed forward in pursuit, the artillery brought up to pound at the retreating Russians, but the organized retreat was sustained, and the harrying efforts of the pursuing Germans repulsed. Still, throughout the long, hard day the Russians fell back, and fell back again, until they had retreated seven miles toward the rear, and left Rennenkampf's whole army in danger of destruction. Yet he had already committed his reserve, and by that point it arrived. Rennenkampf's reserve division was flung in to counterattack against the advancing Germans at point of bayonet. Fifteen out of every hundred in the division fell wounded or killed, but the Germans were halted and over the night the Russians began to dig new trench lines so that come the next day they might try to stand fast once more. Only now Rennenkampf had no reserve left.


WYSZKOW, POLAND
28 AUGUST 1914


The remnants of the 15th division had been retreating for two whole days to the south. Scarcely more than a brigade now on account of the great casualties they had suffered in fighting a whole corps of German 1st Army, they had abandoned their wagons and their artillery to avoid being intercepted on their route of march by the ten regiments of German cavalry and ten battalions of Jaegers hotly pursuing them. In mid-afternoon on the 28th they had reached Wyszkow and begun to entrench. Many of them had abandoned their shovels or simply never had one to begin with and had to use their bayonets and hands.

They had no wire, and they were supported by only twelve machine-guns. Yet they resolved to try and stand and gain time for 9th Army, still mobilizing in Warsaw, and 10th Army, being rushed to the front, to respond to the threat of German 1st Army's advance. The German cavalry, for their part, arrived before the entrenchments were even near to being finished, as hot on the heels of the Russians as they had been. The cavalry had one regiment of dragoons and the Neumärkisches Grenadier-zu-Pferde Regiment—mounted grenadiers. The rest was the regiment of the Guard Uhlans, a short regiment of landwehr Cuirassiers, and six regiments of Hussars.

Immediately the dragoons—the 2nd Brandenburg regiment of Dragoons—and the Neumärkisches Grenadier-zu-Pferde Regiment dismounted and deployed with their carbines to boost the rifle strength of the Jaegers. They were sixteen hundred rifles among the two regiments and they reinforced around nine thousand effectives in the Jaeger battalions; in total there were close to eleven thousand rifles arrayed against the Russians, and around 50 machine guns—Jaeger battalions normally had six attached. The Uhlans were held back as a reserve along with the Jaeger's bicycle companies, and three regiments of Hussars were sent against each flank.

The machine-guns of the Jaegers were used like artillery, brought right forward and emplaced to provide cover for the advance of the Jaegers themselves. They suffered for it, many suffering heavy losses to their crews and being disabled by the excellent intensity of the Russian defensive fire and their own machine-guns, pitifully few in number. But they kept the Russians' heads down as the Jaegers worked their way forward to close range, alternatively taking cover and firing as other sections dashed.

In the centre, flanking the road and railroad which ran into the town, the dismounted Dragoons and Grenadiers-zu-Pferde advanced, firing as they pressed on ahead, ordered to take out the Russian machine-gun nests in the centre. It was here that Margrete Hoffmeyer fought. She was twenty-one years old, and though women in the dragoons were hardly uncommon—there were seven in the 2nd Brandenburg—she was also the only Jew.

Having been driven out of her home under the pressure of an arranged marriage at age eighteen, she had lived in the streets of Berlin over the winter of 1911 to 1912; that sort of life, entirely disagreeable, had stopped soon enough when a man tried to force her into prostitution. The same night she'd gotten quite drunk at the hopelessness of her situation and spilled out the whole sordid story of her life to an ancient and white-whiskered elderly man who claimed to have fought in the Cavalry for the Hohenzollerns in the Schleswig-Holstein, Austrian, and French wars of the last century.

He had listened to her, then waved his hand with a laugh and said, 'well, Marcus, with a proper set of trousers and a haircut the Dragoons will see you through.'” She'd taken the hint, done as he said, and for the past three years served in the 2nd Brandenburg as a volunteer, under the name Marcus Ulrich. Everyone knew—and nobody cared. There was a long tradition of a few women serving in the Dragoons, which like the old veteran knew, was simply never talked about, for the sake of the ones who had proved their worth under fire.

She had already had her chance and come out before; her regiment had provided fire support to the attack through the wedge in the Russian army those two days prior, and it had given her a taste of what to expect now, of the rush of the bullets going past, laying low in the tall browned grass of late summer, rising and dashing for one's life, and firing, firing, firing after you'd dropped down once more, ten aimed rounds a minute, after minute, until your shoulder was blackened with bruises. Before the pain could even settle in, rise up and risk death to dash forward once more.

Thus it was here, also. It all happened so fast and so slow at once, like you were traveling in two directions at the same time. Men were chopped down around Margrete and she still pressed forward, because that is what she had been told to do and because that is what she had done in the battle two days' prior—who's name she still did not know, and perhaps never would. At last, they were in close, only fifty meters out at most, and one of the sergeants of the regiment stood up with the colour-bearer of the regiment guidon next to him, and a lieutenant with sword drawn on his right, and together the three made a dash up to the top of the embankment for the raised railroad track.

The lieutenant staggered, wounded, but the three made it, and sheltered on one side, heads just out of sight of the Russians on the other side, but exposed to fire on the regiment's side—but also in a position to pour rifle fire down into the Russian trenches. Their only support for the moment was the rifles of the regiment and two machineguns of the flanking Jaeger battalion.

“Forward!!” Some glory-lusting corporal shouted and rose up, charging with his carbine. A host of the regiment's troopers followed and Margrete found herself in the wave of the advance herself. Bullets richoceted wildly off the thick gravel of the railroad embankment, and men toppled down it dead, shot right through, and tripped others with their bodies as they did, still gasping their last mortal breaths.

Margrete found herself shoved to the gravel by the fall of someone else's body. She didn't even push the dead man aside—his corpse, at least, provided some cover even as it oozed out from the wound in his chest where two machine-gun bullets had torn through him just inches from her own head, mere seconds before. Instead she at once brought her carbine to her shoulder and began again, like an automon, to put ten rounds rapid down onto the Russian lines, paying special attention to the two machineguns she saw stationed at hundred-yard intervals here at the critical point. Under the massed rifle-fire of the regiment along the embankment, at enfilade, the machine-guns were soon silenced, worked only intermittently by the most brave of the Russians who charged up out of their cover to snatch them up and gallantly resume firing despite the fact that two hundred rifles would immediately be concentrated against their own mortal person.

The dying of the fire of the machine-guns improved their position greatly, and though they still fired intermittently, it was as good as the regiment could do without trying to storm the Russian entrenchments, which would be suicidal without bayonets. Instead one of the troop captains grabbed a signal gun from an aide and fired a flare into the air, as he had been instructed to do.

Oberstleutnant Wilhelm Ritter von Schramm was the commander of the ersatz landwehr regiment of cuirassiers which had been formed up as part of 1st Army's landwehr formations, out of an assortment of cuirassier troops that nobody really wanted anywhere else on account of their obsolence. But now they would get a chance to prove their worth. The signal flare had been fired. Von Schramm drew his sabre without hesitation.

“Regiment—advance at the trot!”

The German Cuirassiers went forward to the bugle-calls and beating drums, trotting in a tight column of men along the flat of the road and the graded area beside the railroad embankment beyond it. There was enough room for twenty horsemen abrest, and the rest were stacked, six hundred in all, behind them to add great mass to the charge, thirty deep. Von Schramm saw the slight bend in the road, past a copse of trees, just ahead. At that point they would be exposed to the enemy's fire. He tensed himself, inhaled, and prepared to give the order.

Thirty seconds later, at most, they swung around it, and he didn't hesitate: “Regiment--en column--sound charge!”

The bugle sounded its clarion call, and the heavy German war horses broken into a full gallop and then an all-out mad run down the MacAdamized surface of the road and the flat to either side. They only had to go four hundred yards...

Russians saw them coming on, even as the Dragoons did and cheered wildly at the sight. In full plate cuirass and steel helmet, all woefully obsolete against modern bullets, the heavy horse thundered down the pavement in a desperate effort at victory or death. The Russians, for their's, redoubled their efforts to keep the machine-guns firing, even from the peasants who half-thought the monstrous devices to be powered by sorcery. Half the men of the front ranks of the cuirassiers seemed to topple at once, their writhing, wounded horses toppling others in turn.

Suddenly the Russian lines were racing up on them. Men and horses were falling killed and wounded and tripped, the legs of horses broken and the bodies of men crushed, all around, but the regiment charged home with a mad certainty. Von Schramm felt a heavy impact on his chest and gave himself up for dead; but realized there was only an intense pain there. A glance was spared, and he realized that a richocet off the gravel of the railroad embankment had been deflected by his armour, after all.

Then there was no time for even that recognition, for they were upon the Russian lines, and he could but catch a flash of the dragoons cheering and shooting to his right as the cuirassiers burst through the Russian defences and at once fanned out, both for survival and to break into the Russian rear.

The moment this action was observed by the Generalmajor who had, in the typical German fashion of virtuoso tactical improvisation been placed in command of what had been designated an ersatz division, the order was given for the reserves to follow them through. This they did, the Guard Uhlans leading the way to dash down the road, and now the field to its left which had been made safe by the effect of the cuirassiers' charge; they were, in turn, followed by ten companies of jaegers on bicycles. As these forces split the Russian defences in two and plunged deep into their rear, the desperate, rag-tag effort of the 15th division to hold Wyszkow failed, and with it, Von Kluck's instructions to 'advance direction Warsaw' took on an urgently new and desperately imminent meaning.

Just a minor note: the Prussian nobility were not dour Calvinists. They were dour Lutherans.

The royal family were, oddly enough, Calvinist heads of a Lutheran state Church, but that's another matter.

Some very fine work you've stewing away here Duchess. I haven't read a good World War I story in, well, ever, and if anyone can do it, it's you.

And look, you have!

Another excellent chapter. And It makes for very good bedtime reading

joatsimeon wrote:Just a minor note: the Prussian nobility were not dour Calvinists. They were dour Lutherans.

The royal family were, oddly enough, Calvinist heads of a Lutheran state Church, but that's another matter.

Ah yes, another of the little hopeless quirks of the German monarchist institutions.

There's a list of about a half-dozen detail edits which I intend to take care of, at any rate--we rarely screen this stuff heavily as it stands before posting.

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Six

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell

BUCHAWA, POLAND
AUGUST 28, 1914


First Army had moved as rapidly as its commander thought practical and wise towards its major objective, the rail junction and provincial capital of Lublin. Cavalry reconnaissance had determined that signals intercepts indicating that Russian Fourth Army had moved on to the north to deal with a major German assault were accurate. Now, the Dichiffrierdienst had provided yet another intelligence bombshell.

General der Kavallerie Viktor Dankl looked over the intercepted and decoded telegraph one more time, as though it might disappear if he turned his head. “If I did not know better I would suspect a Russian trap.” He spoke to no one in particular, though his command staff was gathered about in the hastily converted drawing room of an appropriated Russian estate.

His chief of staff, Generalmajor Kochanowski, answered anyway. “The new intelligence confirms what our interception of their railroad radio traffic has indicated. We even have cavalry scouts out peering down into the city. By God, the Russians have two corps down in Lublin trying to get past each and detrain, and we’re in a position to assault and destroy both.”

“The Third Transcaucasian corps is supposed to be one of them. What in the devil is it doing here? It says they were to be transferred from their forming Ninth Army on the way to their Third Army opposite Brudermann. And this Nineteenth corps with them has been transferred back and forth between two armies as if it were a tennis ball, according to this information.”

“Our prisoners all indicate that Fourth Army has pulled north of Lublin on a direction for Warsaw,” Kochanowski pointed out. “The Russians may think that two corps is enough to delay us while their Fifth Army and other reinforcements orient themselves to block our further advance. It was probably pure coincidence they were available on the rails and had to pass through Lublin anyway.

“All indications are that our Fourth Army will engage their Fifth Army north of Zamosc by tomorrow at the latest,” Dankl noted. “The Russians may have reason to believe that both our armies in Poland are weaker than we really are, but you know how the Evidenzburo is.”

“Yes sir,” Kochanowski replied noncommittally. The army intelligence service was a shadowy organization at the best of times. “It occurs to me that if they were transferring units from Warsaw all the way to their Third Army that they might be planning a major offensive in the east. That won’t be good if they press our Third Army hard.”

Dankl waved that line of thought away. “Second Army should be arriving from the Balkans to reinforce that flank by now. I will report your observation to General Conrad, though I doubt the implications of this intelligence have escaped the General Staff. And its implications are clear enough for First Army are clear enough.”

“Armeegruppe Kummer is in position on our left flank to cut the rail line to the West,” Kochanowski noted. “And Fourth Army will keep the Russian Fifth Army off of us. So, there is no threat to prevent us from pressing forward, grinding under the elements of the two corps the Russians have throwing up defenses outside Lublin, and forcing the surrender or dispersal of the unprepared enemy commands.”

“An aggressive strategy is worth gambling on,” Dankl agreed. “But I will want those four landsturm brigades brought up, just in case. And our Marschregiments will not be used for the attack under any circumstances. If we encounter unforeseen circumstances I want a large reserve available to extricate ourselves.”

“Perhaps we should see about bringing out some of the lighter fortress batteries with the landsturm brigades,” Kochanowski suggested. “We are quite light on 15cm batteries and light howitzers.”

“See to it,” Dankl ordered. “But first, the orders for this coming battle.” He glanced at a map of the topography of Lublin, with unit locations and status imposed over it. “Fifth Corps will lead the assault on the city from the south. I want Tenth Corps on the right, and First Corps on the left, and we’ll use the 9th Cavalry division to maintain contact between First Corps and Kummer. Try and get General Kummer to put his cavalry division at least over the San, to be ready for Russian movements to the west. We are going to try for encirclement, but no reason to get too elaborate. Speed is of the essence here. 12th Division will be kept in reserve for Fifth Corps if the assault bogs down.”

“Yes sir,” Kochanowski acknowledged. “With your permission I will quote your statement that speed is of the essence in the orders to Feldzügmeister Puhallo.”

“Of course. The good Feldzügmeister is careful and meticulous, but this is a time for action. Make sure he understands that.”


LUBLIN, POLAND
AUGUST 28th, 1914


Fifth Corps did not lag in implementing the directions of headquarters. The Hungarians of the 37th Infantry Division, composed of Honvéd regiments, were the spearhead of the assault into Lublin. Russian artillery fired down on them from the heights to the southwest of the city, even as their own field guns raced ahead to provide covering fire against the approaches of the city. Corps artillery, of the powerful 15cm Skoda howitzers and flexible 10cm field howitzers, was directed to silence the Russian guns, and aided by the heavy artillery of Armeegruppe Kummer now coming into range. The 33rd Infantry Division would have the honor of storming the heights, while some landwehr brigades from Kummer’s group made a demonstration on the other bank of the San River. The Dziesiata heights to the east would be occupied by 14th Infantry Division, putting them in place to threaten the flanks of any resistance to 37th Division.

The Russians had a thin line of riflemen and machine guns blocking the road, with more dug in heavily in support along the Wratków heights. They had been ordered grimly to dig in as well as they could and hold at all costs. Unfortunately for the soldiers of the mixed and confused command, shovels had been dead last in priority for the unloading of equipment off the trains, and neither general had thought to take them from the local population. The improvised defense force had scratched at the ground with their bayonets before abandoning the task at the rapid onset of the Hungarians. Many of the Russian peasants had no idea who their neighboring units were or the officers of the other units hastily mashed together into an ersatz guard. Confusion was rife throughout the scratch Russian forces, and the conscripts, picking up on it, felt a sense of unease and even dread descend over their positions. The officers themselves knew the situation better, and aware of how terribly vulnerable the detraining and reorganizing units were, could place the source of unease. The Austrians had come too quickly, and the battle of Lublin had all the makings of a first rate disaster.

The Austrian field guns opened up on the Russian positions at extreme range, maintaining a steady rate of fire as their infantry advanced in staggered waves at the run. There was no Napoleonic bayonet charge en column, merely an effort by the Magyars to close as fast as possible. The Russians in front of 37th Division had no artillery of their own to answer, and the small handful of 122mm pieces that had been pulled laboriously up the Wratków heights were silenced by Austrian artillery. They had machine guns, though, as many as the commander of the detachment had been able to manhandle off the available trains, without regards for nominal control of the pieces. He had not, however, managed to get their assigned operators or very much of their ammunition. The opening up of the Maxim guns as the first wave of Magyar infantry closed to a hundred meters was still absolutely devastating, and gave momentary heart to the Russian defenders. With the lead regiment of the Hungarian advance seeming to collapse into itself as it met the wave of fire at close ranges, the Russians began to pour a deadly hail of rifle fire into the snarled and stunned enemy.

An energetic Russian officer raised up his ceremonial sword, and shouted over the din of battle. Few heard him at first, but as his words were repeated from those around him to those further down the line in his sector, and soon were heard even by the Magyars as a threatening elemental sound beneath the din of battle. Russian peasants stood up from the firing positions and joined their few officers in a bold, reckless charge with the bayonet into the teeth of the enemy. Having walked into what had been the machine-gun complement of an entire Corps, and been subjected to murderous fire from Russian rifles across an open field, the regiment broke. Officers here and there rallied men together to stand and fire into the onrushing Russians, and other soldiers, wounded and unable to run, stood and faced the sudden and unexpected onslaught. Most, however, turned and ran away from the ferocious Russians and their gleaming, long steel bayonets and their wild shouts. Minutes of bloody fighting and inglorious flight followed, but the suddenness of the counterattack and the resolve with which it was pressed was too much.

The broken regiment had only been the first of many, however, and the next wave of infantry came upon them rapidly. The Magyars stopped and volley-fired into the Russians engaged in the bloody business of finishing off the last standing remnants of the first regiment, and launched their own lunge with bayonet. The Russian commander of the blocking detachment, a General of the Transcaucasian Corps, saw well that the Austrians would smash through that impromptu counterattack. He ordered the machine guns to open fire once more, into the Austrians and Russians engaging them alike, an order that thoroughly demoralized his own troops. At the same time the Austrian howitzers, having finished their business of silencing the Russian guns, began to fire on Russian guard force and into Lublin proper. The bombardment had not been prepared for and wreaked severe damage among the Russian forces, and the unanswerable threat of death from the Austrian guns increased the unease. The sudden machine-gun assault from behind had wiped out the last remnants of the gallant Russian counterattack, but even as it had ensnared the Hungarian advance it had petered out. Too many of the weapons ran out of ammunition or broke down from abuse at untrained hands.

The officers of the Hungarian regiment realized the danger of their situation as the Mosin-Nagants began to bark again, and tried to rally their men once again into assaulting the Russian forces on the road. They succeeded, for the most part, and flung themselves onward to cover the last deadly meters against Russian rifle-fire, now more ragged and uneven. They collided with the Russian lines, with no great force or organization but with a ferocity born of utter desperation. The Russians stood their ground fatalistically, contesting the road north to their disorganized parent commands and to disaster. The fighting was brutal and pitiless, and the ground churned into mud watered by the blood of the combatants as bodies fell like cordwood on the road to Lublin. In the heat of the vicious combat the senses of the soldiers narrowed and became more focused, their overriding survival instinct and adrenaline fueling acts of extreme bravery without the intervention of conscious thought. And as they struggled, the next Austrian brigade approached to add its weight to the pressure on the Russian defenders.

Heavy Austrian artillery fired over the battlefield as the mortal struggle took place, plunging shells into the marshalling yards of the Lublin rail junctions. Trains packed with equipment and disorganized men being formed into semi-coherent units were alike disrupted as the howitzer shells found their mark. The best Russian officers were, conveniently, the most exposed as they had cajoled and kicked their men into something like order. A fearful execution was wreaked on the vulnerable men and all command collapsed as the survivors fled all about the periphery of the station to find what shelter they could, and panicked men trampled one another in the densely packed pocket as more shells exploded to send steel shrapnel lancing through crowds and into bodies. Overhead the Russian peasant conscripts could see, if they thought themselves covered enough underneath overturned carts or protected by trenches to look up, a strange shape in the sky. Its buzzing sound, heard in a brief interlude in the shelling, reminded them of the grandmothers’ tales of Babi Yaga, and somehow they felt the malicious part of the aircraft in their plight. They cursed it as a devil as execution rained down in among them, the Skoda 15cm howitzers remorselessly going about their task of breaking up the Russian concentrations inside the town.

The arrival of elements of the 33rd division on the flank of the Russian blocking detachment, flush from victory at the storming of the heights, led to the collapse of all resistance. The conscripted peasants broke and ran as the Austrians got through their thin screen and advanced behind them, throwing their rifles to the ground as they did so. Others simply broke off from the fighting and finding a secure space with other survivors made the decision to enter Austrian captivity; the presence of officers at the forefront of the fighting insured that most of those who did so survived the attempt. The cost of this point left the 37th Division punch-drunk, and it followed up its success modestly and without taking much initiative. The commitment of the reserve 12th Division, through the breach in lines made by their efforts, allowed the push to continue unabated. Other forces on the flanks had had less rough times of it, and they began to push into Lublin itself against fragmented and disorganized opposition.

Caught unprepared, disorganized, and outnumbered, and with nothing standing between them and superior Austrian forces, the two Russian corps effectively collapsed. The worst officers took to fleeing as the Austrians closed in on all sides, some heading north and east, others fleeing west with whatever men they could. There was no attempt to defend the city further or to get the masses of Russian infantry moving in a single direction. Most tried to hide themselves in civilian areas of the city, or fled as directionless clots every which way. The approach of advanced Austrian squads was the signal for whole ragged, theoretical companies and battalions to surrender, their officers have deserted them perhaps hours ago. The Polish Legion of Jozef Pilsudski was delegated the task of cleaning out the town after First Army’s main combat units moved off in pursuit of fleeing remnants, and took to the task with undisguised glee. Russian soldiers were rousted out of abandoned buildings, basements, sewers, and other hiding places with the cooperation of the local Poles. As night fell, word came through the remaining surrounded Russian private soldiers that surrender meant safety and an end to fighting. All save the sternest and most dedicated of the conscripts found this offer too enticing, and so began turning themselves in as the situation settled down from the bloody events of the morning and afternoon.


SEREJE, POLAND
28/29 AUGUST 1914


Thunder cracked across the darkened sky. A summer shower had come to the town of Sereje in the northeastern panhandle of Congress Poland. Clouds obscured the sunny sky of the day before and cast a darkened palour across the whole of the landscape, as sheets of rain began to fall under the constant roar of thunder and the far more occasional flash of lightening. Most of the thunder was of course artificial, by far the greatest of it being the fire of the 21cm howitzers. Smoke wafted over the battlefield and drifted into the town, and the din of the firing of the guns blanked out entirely the lesser sounds, of the screaming and shouting of men, the crack of rifles, the chatter of machine-guns and the blare of martial music.

There were no planes up in this weather from Third Army's feldflieger detachment, and for a moment the lines of men advancing to the front, the images of the banners and the clarion call of the trumpets, the massed field guns positioned wheelock to wheelock, might make the casual observer think that nothing had changed since the age of Napoleon. But these guns were not the bronze bells of Napoleon's age; they were strangely sinister on their old wooden-spoked carriage wheels, adorned with bizarre equipment and with a noticeably built up breach. The guns of the soldiers, too, were so very different—and they advanced exclusively in skirmish order.

If the observer chanced to see more than a snapshot of the action, however, the reality of it would quickly become apparent. Even in the rain and the gathering muck of the soft, spongy ground of the depths of the Baltic forests, the gunners were still laying on fifteen rounds a minute from the 7.7cm cannon, and the hail of riflery swept at hundreds of yards across the field, wreaking havoc in the ranks with an intensity that would have blanched the veterans of Borodino and Leipzig. Despite it all the Germans continued their advance against the Russian lines.

Sereje itself provided a convenient obstacle against the German troops but it was the last one available. Von Hausen had already sent his two Jaeger battalions into the right flank battle where eight regiments of German cavalry were clashing with the 2nd Brigade of the Russian 2nd Cavalry Division, containing the Pavlograd Hussars and the 2nd Don Cossack. The Jaegers had initially, by daringly close placement of their machine-guns, done good execution to the Russian cavalry; the Russians had however sent forward 2nd Her Sovereign Majesty Empress Maria Theodorovna's Life-Pskov Dragoon Regiment, and these excellent troops had, attacking dismounted, entirely repaired the situation on the extreme southern flank of Rennenkampf's Army.

Around Sereje itself the XII Reserve Corps, also III Saxon Corps, had finally been committed to the action. Since the early morning and right till noon—it was now 1300 hours—it had been pressing forward against Sereje itself and only the Russians falling back into the town had halted their retreat. They had been driven out of the trenches they had held that morning when the commitment of divisional-level reserves the day before had briefly halted the German offensive, but among the buildings of Sereje they might yet hold, and there they inflicted extreme casualties on the Saxons pressing forward into the tangle of buildings in Sereje.

For two days, now, three Russian infantry divisions and a single cavalry division had held back a whole German Army. Over those two days the Russian forces had taken the most extreme casualties imaginable; 45% of their men, save in the cavalry, were killed or wounded or captured or simply missing. And yet through the driving rain they fought on with a fatalistic, stoic determination, directing a hail of rifle fire into the advancing Saxons again and again, sometimes rising up into the face of the massed German machine-guns to press home counterattacks at point of bayonet.

Still, the remaining elements of III Saxon, the corps reserve which had just finished a forced march from their point of de-training on the edge of the Augustow forest, were at once thrown into the attack and for the last thirty minutes had ground their way forward through Sereje, such that the majority of the town was in German hands and generally the whole of the line was on the verge of collapse in the centre.

II Saxon Corps now formed the right flank of the infantry advance. In the morning they had attacked and after four hours of fighting had driven the Russians out of their scratch trenches dug over the night before. Through the lashing rain the Germans dashed, dropped, fired, rose up, and dashed forward again, as the Russians fell back from fence-line to fence-line, drainage ditch to drainage ditch, pouring rifle fire into the advancing Saxons every moment they had caught their breath, and firing until they were once more forced back by the steady advance of the German troops.

General von Hoiningen did not keep to his headquarters now. He was close to the front with his staff, a-horse, advancing with the divisions of his corps as the artillery was continuously made to fire and advance and fire once more, trying to keep a suppressing fire upon the Russian batteries as they continually fired in the retreat, and the long gray lines thrust forward again, and still again. He knew he must press his men forward with the utmost vigor, and orders to this effect were being constantly issued to his divisional commanders. The situation ahead was not known; but surely the enemy most collapse sooner or later.

The Russians realized the danger of their own position as well. They had to stop the Germans, and along the edge of a forest to the southeast of the town of Sereje they tried to do this, the regiments falling prone and directing a furious fusiliade into the advance of II Saxon Corps. The situation was quickly divined to Von Hoiningen, with his staff forward. “Halt the advance. I want the howitzers brought forward immediately, and the men prepared for a general attack to be driven home at bayonet.”

“The Russians may try to counterattack themselves,” his Chief of Staff noted with some caution. “Though they do not emphasize the bayonet as much the French they are quite willing to resort to it.”

“Then we'll meet their advance with our own and see who flinches first,” Von Hoiningen answered with a settled determination.

“Of course, Sir.” The numbers situation for the Russians was now impossibly bad, and the order to bring up the howitzers against the unprepared Russian line was inevitable; besides that, it would give the Saxon troops precious time to rest.

It took about thirty minutes to bring the howitzers up. In the meanwhile the Russians in the centre had been driven almost entirely out of Sereje; on the very outskirts of the city they stood as best they could as three times their strength pressed against them with copious amounts of artillery in support. For the Russians, now, the whole reserve for the entire southern flank was a single regiment of lancers, and this was brought forward.

Rapidly the howitzer crews prepared their guns and then the massed fire of the 10.5cm howitzers of II Saxon Corps was at once commenced. Shells flew fast and furious down upon the unprocted Russians. For twenty minutes the Russians stood the shelling in their defensive positions, suffering heavy casualties in the process, but then the divisional commander in that area saw that the Germans were concentrating an attack against his battered lines. Between the shelling and the advance of the Germans that was to impend, he knew that the whole of the forces on this part of the line, being less than a division, would collapse outright when the Germans made their general advance supported by the full concentration of a corps' artillery.

He had bought 1st Army an hour, and now he resolved to buy them more time. The Russian division commander was not a particularly intelligent man, advancing with bayonets into the face of massed artillery with units which were already at only half-strength. Another withdraw might not have broken, and it had better chances of success, surely, than the course he chose. But he was at least personally courageous: He led the attack himself, and was killed for it.

Here the field guns did their terrible work against the Russians, the howitzers adding to the chaos and the slaughter as Von Hoiningen at once ordered the corps-level attack to meet the advancing Russians. Into the teeth of artillery and machine-guns the Russians pressed forward, just to meet with the fixed bayonets of the Saxons and their own massed rifle fire. For a few terrible minutes both sides stood in full view of each other, in the open, pouring on rifle fire and pressing ever closer. But more than three times as many rifles were on the German side, and this effect, combined with the massed artillery, served to halt the momentum of the Russian charge. The brave Russian officers stood their ground and died in place, urging their men on to do the same; the cowards fled, and when they did their men followed and the whole of the front began to collapse enmasse.

By 1500 hours that afternoon, the Russians were in general flight on the southern flank, and they had been driven back from Sereje as well and were retreating also in the centre in general disarray. The disaster was reported to Rennenkampf, but as usual the report was delayed; in the meanwhile the commander of the southern flank of 1st Army sent forward his last reserve to try and change the situation. 2nd Emperor Alexander III's Courland Life-Lancer Regiment was ordered to charge into the advancing II Saxon Corps to buy time for the collapse to somehow be repaired.

This was one of the finest cavalry regiments of the Russian Army, the 2nd Lancers, these brilliant cavaliers of Courland, who were ordered to charge into certain death in the teeth of the German artillery and the masses of men, and obeyed without hesitation. They passed through the lines of the retreating, fleeing masses of peasants with a proud contempt which brought shame to those men who had fought so hard but could no longer take it, even for their own bravery which had surpassed what could really be expected of them, and for a moment the general flight wavered.

The Courlanders had one thing going for them; here in the Baltic forests the open distances for a proper cavalry charge were short. They burst out of the forest into open field and they at once began to charge into the mass of the advancing 2nd Saxon Division. General von Hoiningen saw the charge himself, and could never find any thought for it save admiration, those lancers at once forming into line the moment they burst forth from the wood, and then charging across the fields, heads bowed to the driving rain as they forced their horses on through the muck, lances couched.

Massed artillery turned them, of course. There could be no other result. Hundreds fell; three-fourths of the regiment was essentialy destroyed. But they had certainly not flinched. They bore on the attack through the mass of exploding shrapnel fire in their midst until there were scarcely one man out of four still upon his horse, as rifle fire and machine-guns and the constant thunder of the guns tore through them and their mounts in a most hideous fashion.

They bought about twenty minutes for the Russian southern flank; the 2nd Saxon Division soon began to advance, though it now encountered some improvised stands by units which had been partially rallied in the meanwhile, and these took another half hour in turn to clean up. Elements of one regiment, no more than the strength of a few companies, tried to drive home an attack by bayonet through the woods in the gap which had formed due to the difference in the rate of the advance of 2nd and 4th Saxon regiments, but the corps pioneers were flung into the gap and held it with their rifles. After this all resistance collapsed. Over the evening the Russians simply melted away in the south. By nightfall they were simply a mass of men streaming back toward the rear.

The 2nd Cavalry Division was for the most part cut off; its commander retreated to the southeast, trying to find his own crossing of the Niemen and thus escape. Caught in the German trap, now, were four corps of the Russian Army. Rennenkampf ordered a retreat, and on the next day General von Francois, commanding I Corps in the 8th Army, launched an attack on his own initiative to the north of Simno which sliced off Rennenkampf's northern flank and pinned it against 9th Army to its destruction. Rennenkampf was left with only two corps capable of fighting, both badly attrited, and the men of about another corps, all totally disorganized and in flight.

He tried to get this force across the Niemen at Alytus, knowing that he would have to sacrifice one of his remaining corps capable of fighting to do so—and knowing that, worse, if the rest of the men got to safety, there was no guarantee of escape, for now the German cavalry was sweeping down to the south from Kovno, and whatever units as could escape would have to fall back on Vilno before they arrived. But, regardless, he did try.

OFF NARGEN IS.
GULF OF FINLAND
29 AUGUST 1914


Admiral Gustav Bachmann had been made Supreme Commander of the Baltic on the commencement of the war. When it became apparent that Britain would not immediately enter the conflict, his forces in the Baltic had been considerably reinforced. Consequently the fleet had been moved forward to base out of Danzig and a blockade of the approaches to the Gulf of Finland order to keep the Russians from engaging in offensive mining. To this end a force of thirty torpedo boats and fifteen destroyers was maintained off of the approaches to the Gulf of Finland, with another twenty destroyers remaining with the fleet as an escort, along with two light cruisers. The dreadnoughts were left in Kiel for their own safety but were not able to deploy due to lack of escort. In total twenty-one pre-dreadnoughts formed the Second Fleet, but most were very obsolete.

It was considered acceptable to risk these ships for support of offensive operations in the east because the Russians did not yet have any of their dreadnoughts operational, leaving a window of opportunity without having to risk the dreadnoughts, which Tirpitz insisted be maintained for a potential encounter with the Royal Navy at some point in the future. The pre-dreadnoughts under Bachmann's command were considered a much more acceptable risk overall.

The backing force for the blockade of the Gulf of Finland consisted of six armoured cruisers and six protected cruisers. This force was, due to its greater endurance, maintained behind the torpedo boats and destroyers at all times, while the later had to constantly rotate through to return to Memel to refuel. In the meanwhile the main fleet body stayed close, regularly conducting sorties against Libau, Steinort, Windau, Lyserot, and Osel and Dago islands—on this day it was bombarding Dagort on the later of those islands. Plans were being drawn up for the seizure of these islands, along with the Aland Islands, before the coming of the winter ice.

By this point in the war it had become obvious to Admiral Bachmann that the Russians were not trying to venture out of the gulf. Therefore operations had commenced to press forward into the Gulf until substantial Russian defences were encountered. The Russians had resorted to the hasty buildup of the planned, but unfinished, defences along the Nargen-Porkkala-Udd line. Now Bachmann had reached the point of confidence as to where he was ready to interrupt this defensive building, and with luck force the abandonment of Revel and Helsingfors as bases for the Russian fleet.

Admiral Essen of the Russian Navy had other ideas, and they had been carefully developed to counter his opponent. Now, as the German probes against the Center Line developed in full-fledged general operations, they were being implemented. Quickly the German patrols had been drawn into an extended firefight with their Russian counterparts. This series of skirmishes had started the day before and continued intermittently through the night to be resumed on this day, Saturday the 29th of August.

Even late summer on the Baltic was something dark and primordial. For all that civilization had been on its banks for centuries there was still something untamed about the rugged blackness of the forests which surrounded these shores. A black sea, with black shores, and amber upon the beaches; yet despite all the mystery of the place and the almost cthonian atmosphere, it still seemed more a place of peace than that, of fog banks rolling in off the depths and fishing boats working their trade under hoisted sails.

But the crack of guns interrupted this visage as much as it did upon the nearby shore. German destroyers raced in formation with torpedo boats; five of the first and ten of the later, clustering and firing their guns and then dashing off under fog and smokescreens. They were engaged with a sizeable force of their Russian counterparts, backed by cruisers, and slowly retiring as the old cruisers came up under full power to support them. Rear Admiral Echermann was commander of the Baltic recon force, the twelve elderly cruisers were formed to support the blockade, advancing at eighteen knots toward the scene of this clash.

The battle that followed was confused, swift, and very short. Echermann's force had been in the centre of the Gulf to try and avoid the shore batteries which were believed to be emplaced on Nargen island. As they headed south-southwest to the point of the engagement the Russian cruiser squadron was actually making a turn to the north to avoid a massed torpedo attack by the withdrawing German lights. The lookouts on the foremast of the cruiser Yorck spotted the looming gray shape first.

“Enemy battleship one point to port! Range.... Six thousand meters!”

“Alert the flagship at once,” the Yorck's Captain ordered. A moment later: “Commence main battery fire.”

Just as the message was being dispatched, however:

“Enemy ship positively identified—armoured cruiser Rurik.”

It was barely seen in the fog. The two lines of cruisers were passing each other at a combined speed of thirty-eight knots, as fast as two trains rushing past each other. At this close range most of the captains commenced firing under their own authority and the guns of the Rurik had already opened up, 10in and 8in fire falling around the old Yorck even as her own guns salvoed back 8.23in projectiles at the Russian giant.

“Signal corrected contact report to flag,” the Captain of the Yorck then ordered, but it was nearly to late.

The Russians were on a somewhat converging course, and the distances were already desperately close. Soon other ships were seen out of the fog: Gromoboi, Rossiya, protected cruisers—it was clear that the Russian force might even outnumber their own, and certainly had the speed advantage. Yorck and Rurik stubbornly continued to fire on each other, even as Prince Aldabert immediately to the lead AC's stern in line also commenced firing on the Rurik.

Then the bridge crew of Yorck felt a horrible shudder and intense thunder roll through the hull of their ship. She had been struck abaft, fortunately to the stern of B turret, and somewhat above the waterline; yet the power of the 10in shell against the outdated ship was still immense. At the same time, a great number of smaller shell splashes were starting to fall around the Yorck as the Gromoboi's 6in batteries commenced firing on her as well.

But the firing of three different calibres at the same ship rendered the fire control situation hopeless. The Yorck was not struck again, and soon the Rurik checked fire on her anyway.

Rear Admiral Echermann however was still operating on the assumption that he had encountered the Russian Baltic Fleet Battle Squadron. At that very moment the signal was received on the bridge of the Yorck:

“Commence turn by division four points starboard. Maintain battle-flank!”

It conflicted the Yorck's master immediately, for in the rush and confusion of the head-on battle at sea he had just received a report from the torpedo officer: “We've got a firing solution on the fourth Russkie coming up!”

He took the chance. “Let's get off one salvo from the port tubes before we execute the turn!”

Yorck fired two 17.7in torpedoes at the Russian cruiser Pallada before executing her turn. At that distance the fish ran fast, and one of them struck the cruiser in the bows, blowing a vast and jagged hole right forward. At the speed of twenty knots, with forward hull integrity entirely compromised, the whole forward section of the bow was ripped off; the ship's engines were immediately started and she turned to starboard to clear the line on momentum, Captain and Engineer and men alike praying that the first transverse bulkhead would hold.

In the 2nd Cruiser Division of the Germany force, however, the flagship, the Roon, led the two old armoured cruisers Furst Bismarck and Prinz Heinrich. Prinz Heinrich was immediately trailing the flagship, and as Rurik, flying the flag of no lesser personage than Admiral Essen himself, resumed fire, it was directed at this ship. The range was now at less than six thousand meters and the 10in guns of the Rurik could punch through her 4in armour like it didn't exist; that is exactly what they did.

By a quirk of fate the 8in batteries of the Rurik were slow in opening up on the new target, letting the ship's gunnery officer get a perfect target against the old armoured cruiser before going to rapid fire. In total seven full salvoes were fired at the Prinz Heinrich in the space of four minutes, and there were four hits, plus a few others from the 8in guns. Through the first three the old armoured cruiser held her own; the fourth, however, from the last salvo, penetrated the magazine of the 150mm guns concentrated in the port-centre emplacement, three far to tightly spaced for their own good; the explosion of one magazine set off the others.

As the thunderous explosions shook in sequence down the German line, the Prinz Heinrich was fatally damaged. Fortunately her destruction was not as sudden as that of a ship having been struck in the main battery magazines; instead she lurched down toward port, but for a while held at a severe list, even as water entered in other areas through shell holes from the Rurik's other hits. The order to abandon ship was given, and in remarkable calmness the men mustered on deck to escape, even as the flames rose up amidships, leaving the sailors trapped between fire and the icey water of the Baltic. She sank in eighteen minutes with the loss of two hundred and seventy men; another two hundred were recovered by the Russians as prisoners of war, and the rest by their own side.

The Germans were now mostly escaping, but the protected cruisers of the 4th division, the rearmost, remained quite vulnerable, because the Russians were continually closing. Despite the age of her guns the Freya scored one 8.23in hit on the Rurik, severely damaging her aft conning station, and the big armoured cruiser was by that point peppered by lighter fire. But Gromoboi, right behind the Rurik, was pounding cruiser after cruiser with rapid-fire HE from her 6in guns, and started fires on the Victoria Louise which were for a time serious; she did much more severe damage with her 15in broadside tubes:

Three salvoes of two torpedoes each were fired, and one hit the second to the last ship in the German line, the protected cruiser Hertha. The cruiser had an elder torpedo defence layout at best—but the 15in torpedoes of the Gromoboi were equally elderly, and so the impact amidships was not fatal, though the Hertha soon slowed and dropped to the stern of the line.

Rear Admiral Echermann's efforts in coordinating with the light forces on the blockade guaranteed that the seriously damaged Hertha was able to limp along at 6 knots in safety from the Russian light, who fought several actions with their German counterparts trying to get in range of her. His report to Admiral Bachmann that the Russian Battleline was present (Gromoboi and Rossiya being mistaken for Slava and Tsesarvich by several ships serving only to reinforce the initial mistake of Rurik's identity) brought the German Baltic Fleet to the north in all its elderly strength; their screen engaged briefly with the Russian destroyers the next day, but in the end all they did was escort the Hertha back to Konigsberg.

For his part, Admiral Essen succeeded in getting every one of his cruisers back to Revel, even the Pallada, which arrived traveling astern, foredeck nearly awash and the tips of her screws biting air, but nonetheless afloat. The Russian destroyers which attacked the Hertha later on claimed her, even though they had never actually got into torpedo range, due to the confusion of the action with the lights; thus Essen was hailed as the victor of the 'Battle of Nargen' for sinking two enemy cruisers without loss, while Echermann was generally congratulated for having gotten all but one of his ships away from an ambush by the Russian Line of Battle.


LUBLIN, POLAND
AUGUST 30th, 1914


The disheveled, slightly filthy Russian conscript shambled out of the abandoned house and into the noon sun. He squinted at the light, and hesitated for a moment, but was roughly shoved into a line with other Russians prisoners. A rifle waved at the group of prisoners by a disinterested Pole in Austrian uniform quickly dissuaded him from acting on his peasant’s sense of having been injured. He was out of the war now, and he had finished drinking all of the good liquor in the house last night anyway; there was nothing worth losing his life over in this whole affair now, especially if the Austrians were treating POWs humanely.

The knot of Russians was marched out of the southern fringe around Lublin, stopping a number of times to pick up more prisoners from their recently discovered hiding places. Along the way a Russian-speaking Pole from the area explained their status as prisoners of war. The prospect of regular meals and little activity appealed to most of the peasant conscripts, though the more educated Russians looked at least a bit sullen at their fate. A handful of Ruthenian prisoners press-ganged into the Russian army from near the Galician frontier had to have it explained to them that the Emperor (Francis Joseph) and the Tsar (Nicholas II) were not one and the same person. The disappearance of their officers and shock of the sudden interruption to their accustomed routines made them docile enough, however, and prisoner patrol detail was not the worst assignment handed out in Lublin. The artillery barrage that had smashed much of two Russian corps scrambling to detrain had been relatively accurate, but shells had landed here and there inside the town itself, and much of the Polish Legion had been ordered to help in the cleanup.

As the last Russian prisoners were handed off to the Hungarian regiment that had taken over responsibility for their dispensation, the Polish guards were required to report back to their officers. The lieutenant in charge of the detachment allowed them to stop and rest for a few minutes, taking a smoke break in sight of the herds of Russian prisoners being sorted and segregated. They watched the bedraggled enemy conscripts without much in the way of emotion.

One of the privates finally decided to strike up a conversation. “What a beautiful sky, comrades. Is it because of the weather, or is it because we are so happy to be back in our homeland that all things look better?”

“That is possible”, one of his fellows responded. “Though I think our senses are unimpaired. Euphoria will be once our own flag flies from our own soil, once more.”

“You may have to wait that long, with your ugly face, Karol” the squad cynic replied, mocking but without malice. “For my part I had euphoria in my sack last night. Her name is Beata, daughter of that tailor we met yesterday, and she has…” He traced out a buxom figure in the air with his hands.

The second soldier laughed in mocking scorn. “Perhaps in your dreams, Piotr. I won’t dare guess what was in your sack last night, but I hear the captain’s dog is missing today…”

The rest of the detachment burst into a round of hooting, whistling, and clapping. Several Magyar sentries, unable to speak Polish, looked askance at them. Their lieutenant, deciding perhaps that the men had now had enough time to finish their cigarettes and carouse enough to break tension, and perhaps worried the friendly jesting would turn not-so friendly soon, made a motion to order them onward. They broke out of their lounging poses and slovenly postures to attention, and formed a March formation again. As they passed through the great Polish city, one soldier began whistling the Mazurek Dabrowskiego, and before long the whole detachment was singing it loudly. They passed a handful of Austrian officers who did speak Polish, most of whom leveled narrow glances at the Poles. The positive mention of Bonaparte was never particularly welcome in the army of the Habsburg Empire.

Finally they reached the small post set up by their company, and the lieutenant ordered them to halt and remain silent as he left to speak with the captain. A few minutes passed, and notwithstanding the injunction of their commander, the ranks began a quiet murmur. There were ribald jokes and rumors of the war, for the most part. They quieted down quickly as the lieutenant emerged, with new orders for them. Most hoped it did not involve being sent back to the work gangs organized by the Polish Legion headquarters. Patrols were far easier work, and offered the opportunity to meet the townspeople, who as often as not could be rather appreciative of their fellow Poles in uniform.

“We are in luck, gentlemen,” the lieutenant started. “Our Colonel is giving a speech to the people of the city, with some other dignitaries as well, to be distributed throughout Poland. And as the finest representatives of our glorious homeland who are not covered in dirt and sweating like pigs, we have been detached from company to provide support. Back in column, and try not to embarrass yourselves.”

The men of the Polish Legion were not regular soldiers, and many had not even been called up for training during their eligibility for conscription. The core of the Polish Legion had been shooting clubs established pre-war by Pilsudski and his Polish Socialist Party. Discipline was about as well as could be expected, under the circumstances, despaired the captain, who had watched that performance.

The detachment arrived at a hastily cleared street outside the royal castle of Casimir the Great, and was told to provide a number of guards to the gates. Others were scattered throughout the courtyard, providing extra hands for arranging dignitary seating before being set in front of a wooden stage and podium where Colonel Pilsudski was to speak. Men in formal wear and women in their Sunday dresses began filtering in after an hour, with a body of officers of the legion arriving as a group somewhat later. A number of reporters from various Polish-language journals and newspapers were also invited in, though the Legion propaganda section had already written up the description of the event to be circulated in the pamphlets of the secret organization established throughout Poland.

The guards tried to be conscientious in their duties; a current of energy and excitement surrounding the event affected them, and their efforts were poor at best, though no threat existed. Eventually, after an hour and half of the arrival of the soldiers, a band hidden inside the castle struck up the Mazurek Dabrowskiego as Colonel Jozef Pilsudski made entrance in his full dress uniform. He advanced from the entrance to the courtyard with a measured, purposeful stride, his gaze meeting the eyes of the assembled soldiers around the podium. Some of them flinched from the hardness they felt meet them.

Once on the platform he stood behind the podium, gripping its sides tightly. His manner of speech was usually brusque, and colored with rough language, but he knew from studying various models, including the great Bonaparte, that a commander must sometimes provide an elevated vision in words for his troops. Pilsudski meant to do more than fire up an army, though. He meant to inflame the people of his long-suffering homeland against their oppressors, all of them, though tactics dictated that for the moments the Russians would be the enemy of choice.

“Friends, countrymen. I speak today in a liberated Lublin. Today our Polish flag flies over the soil of our great homeland, guarded by soldiers of the Polish nation.” Which was technically true. Dankl had not, after all, objected to the Legion taking over the royal castle and running the Polish flag up an impromptu flagpole there.

“This must be a sign of things to come. The Polish Legion will continue its struggle for the Polish nation and people. Many of you I hope to call comrades in this long struggle. It has already claimed the lives of Polish patriots, and it will claim many more. Some even in the Russian army, seized by the agents of the Tsar to fight for the nation that has sought to destroy Polish culture in the heartland of Poland. It is a tragic state of affairs, but it is also promising. We have the opportunity now to shed our blood for Poland and the resurrection of our long-sundered nation, and that is the greatest joy of any Polish patriot. We do so in the uniform of Austria, for that is the best hope of the restoration of unity of our nation. It is that hope of unity which drives the Polish Legion to fight and die, and for which I would gladly lay down my own life.

Let us never forget the glories of the ancient Commonwealth that has inspired our patriotism and loyalties. Let us never forget the brutal destruction of the ancient liberties of the Polish nation and people at the hands of our oppressors. Let us never forget the hangman of Wilna, the executions in the citadel of our capital of Warsaw, and the enslavement of Polish women and children to Siberia after the January Uprising. And let us never forget the Russian attempt to exterminate our language by denying education in our mother-tongue to our children, and their efforts to destroy or co-opt our culture. Even as we speak, in our land of Galicia, the Russians behave like an Asiatic horde, defacing Catholic and Uniate churches, destroying schools for the instruction of the Polish language, and unleashing wild hordes of Cossacks against a free Polish people. That they draft our people to fight and die against their enemies while they seek to destroy all that Poland represents is a final cynical insult to our national rights.

These are merely a handful of the works of defilement that Russian occupation has inflicted on our lands. So long as Poles remain divided and under alien rule, that will be our lot. But let us also remember the historic role of our great nation when it was united and strong. It was Poland that defeated the tide of the Turk upon Europe at the gates of Vienna, led by the great Sobieski. It was our nation that kept in check the savage Russian nation of the 16th century, and provided a shield for our brother Lithuanians and Ukrainians to develop their national consciousness. Poland alone of the great nations of Europe maintained a reputation for communal harmony and religious toleration, and prospered because of it. The historic mission of the Polish nation to civilize Eastern Europe has not failed in spite of our separation, but we must recover our national rights to do so. The defeat of the Russians and the liberation of Polish lands to the east, and the emancipation of the other peoples enslaved by the Empire of the Tsars is our sacred mission.

Some have called for the support of Russia in this war, that all of Poland might be united once more under the Romanov crown. You, citizens of Lublin, have seen what the oppression of the Russian autocracy means. We will have unity, but the true unity of a free Polish people on our terms, not as slaves for the Tsar. A ‘united’ Poland under the Russians would simply mean that all of Poland would be subjected to the dangers of Russification, instead of just the part already in the maw of the beast. The experiences of the Polish people show us that the hollow pan-Slavic appeal of the whores of the Russian crown are a simple blind for Russian imperialism. The szlatcha who appeal for the loyalty of Poland to the Romanov are in spirit the same traitors that their class was in the 18th century, when they sabotaged the efforts to defend our national existence. If Poland is to be reunited and restore itself to the company of honorable nations, it must do so by its own efforts, represented by the Legion.

I too, make a call for loyalty. Loyalty to the Polish people and nation. Let us wage war against the Russians. We act in association with the Austrians and Germans because our goals are the same, not as puppets. We will earn our freedom by expelling the Russian from our heartland, and in doing so astound the peoples of Europe once more with Polish courage…”

Pilsudski went on in that vein for about a half-hour. The guards listened, and thought it a fine speech. It was a call for revolution, a recruitment drive for the Legion, an assertion of Polish national rights and moral argument for independence. It would be heavily circulated throughout Poland, and quickly enough throughout the world. It was also aimed at staking out a clear position for the Polish National Committee as a player in the political settlement of the war. Pilsudski showed more tact than to attack his allies directly, though several of his statements caused Austrian officers around Lublin to grit their teeth tightly, and would have had a worse effect on Germans. The “Appeal of Lublin” would, as Pilsudski had hoped, have consequences.


VOSGES MOUNTAINS
WESTERN ALSACE
30 AUGUST 1914


It was the day of the Lord, and yet there was fighting on it as on any other. The war did not stop for sundays, the same as all wars before it, and on the extremity of the Vosges this day it was of a particular intensity. Over the past week the German Army, wheeling east from the gates of Nancy, had wheeled into the flank of Dubail's 1st Army and forced him to withdraw from his effort to take Sarrebourg. But when it seemed that a serious loss might be inflicted upon the French in the flanking attack, the French forces before Nancy, which had appeared to be totally beaten after their expulsion from Lorraine, had themselves counterattacked and forced the shifting of Rupprecht's reserves to meet their blow, thereby stalling his counterattack against Dubail.

In this way Sarrebourg had been saved for the Germans, but Dubail retained a fighting force which was now being utilized once again quite effectively, with a lunge being directed against Saverne. Here they attacked the flank of the Crown Prince's badly weakened army, the right flank of which was XVI Corps. An attack here had, however, been expected, and the Germans had a nasty surprise for the French on the offensive. They had learned some lessons from the Russo-Japanese War; one of these was the usefulness of mortars, and to that end the 25cm rifled mortar or minenwerfer had been developed and employed with the German Army. About 180 were now in service; they were all placed on the western front to aide in the defence, and some sixty had been concentrated along the weak and spread out front of XVI Corps.

Rupprecht's counterattack had, even though while not succeeding as well as it could have, bought enough time for the Crown Prince to dig his troops in. They were along a low ridge on the northern verge of the Vosges, far enough back that the French direct-line artillery had no purchase on higher elevation against them, though the limited number of French heavy howitzers had caused them trouble before the attack; not enough to disrupt the defences. The defences had been carefully prepared like siege-work to funnel the French attacks into machine-gun companies and the kill zones of the big 25cm minenwerfers.

For their part, the French attacked as splendidly as ever, advancing en column to press home bayonet charges. Their early reverses in Lorraine had been offset by the fact that nearly three-fourths of Alsace had been overrun by their army and they were still confident in their tactics because of this fact. That confidence began its end here, on this day, in the north of the Vosges and to the south of Saverne.

Two hours after dawn the French attacked, and they continued to attack until an hour after sunset. For eleven hours, wave after wave of French infantry pushed forward. From a kilometer out they could come under the fire of the 25cm minenwerfers, and there was one of them for every 100 meters of corps frontage. Bands played, drums rolled, banners flew, and the French rushed forward in their blue and red with the flash of fixed cold steel shining in the August sun afixed to gunmetal. And around them the howitzer shells and the mortar shells reined down constantly in a hail of explosive and shrapnel.

They died, and they died, and they died. But they still pressed on. In 1870 very close to here along the lower course of the Saar at Wörth the French had pressed home an attack against the Prussians and Bavarians when ultimately outnumbered two-to-one, directly into the teeth of massed artillery. None of the regiments had broken, but of the 2nd Turcos the losses were so great that it was accounted that 93% of the regiment were casualties; the 13th Hussars lost 87%, yet they did not break!. Such figures serve to stupefy the mind; when combined with such valour as that the regiments still maintained a semblence of order, they are all but superhuman. Yet such feats were repeated here, and it was a bitter reality that the dusty books of history on a war fourty-four years distant could not encapsulate:

Bodies torn to shreds by the minenwerfers and the howitzer men; whole lines of men chopped up by maxim guns sweeping through them, massed riflery converging from the German defensive trenches on the advancing columns, it all tore through the French with the greatest of severity. And yet they came on! Four times the charges of the French units were repulsed, and each time they were ordered forward once again, reinforced, flung straight into the same fire, and they obeyed and did so, and were thrown back with even greater losses, but accepted the order to attack again, and again, without complaint, and even with cheers.

Men saw every one of their friends die at their sides. They continued to attack. Whole regiments were being led by lieutenants; companies by coporals. Yet the French pressed forward, as though driven by a supernatural force. None of these men were fanatics; they were almost entirely conscripts, and merely patriots, yet within themselves they found the elan to carry on such that human will could overcome mere machinery, and they were perhaps killed by it, but surely not conquered by it. It was a sight that moved some of their foes to weep; but those who did were unwise, for this was not a butcher's house, and the French not spent.

On the fifth bayonet charge the French pressed on against that maddening fight once more with frightless bravery. They stood such a storm of death as to sweep away thousands; they stood it, and they stepped boldy straight through it. This time the German defences were not enough to deter them. They accepted the casualties, they pressed on anyway, and they took the German trenches in many places, driving the exhausted and shocked defenders clear at point of bayonet. In one moment mass slaughter by machine turned into slaughter by cold steel, and those poulis who had stood through that storm had their revenge. Yet they had stormed through such a hail of shrapnel and machine-gun fire to achieve this that even the fresh reserve regiments involved in the attack lost three out of every ten. The Tricolour waved over the German trenches through the setting sun, but the victory did not hold.

The Germans had reserves. Their machine-gun strongpoints along the front lines had held, like miniature forts, even when the trenches themselves were taken. They counterattacked with their reserves, supported by these little forts, and in bayonet fighting which followed they drove the French out of the trenches, though at very great cost to their own men. The French retreated, and as darkness gathered, old long-service NCO's begged their officers for another chance to attack. But they did not have it in them; more than half of the attacking French force were now casualties, and lonely regimental flags which on the start of the war had been surrounded by hundreds of brave young men now had an escort of dozens.

Yet for all the shock of that bloody day in the northern Vosges, the French had not lost their elan. Surely it was the mountains; the terrain had been bad. They were still prepared to attack on the flat plain of the Rhineland around Strasbourg, to win back that city of Louis' triumph for the Republic which had displaced his heirs. Here they would pit the elan of men against massed machine-gun fire one more time, and nobody doubted the abilities of the human soul.


VIENNA, AUSTRIA
AUGUST 31st, 1914


The chamber of the aides-de-camp rested just outside the private study of His Imperial and Royal Majesty Franz Josef. Oberst Maximilian Ronge nodded politely at the navy aide on duty. Miklos Horthy had recently been promoted to the rank of linienschiffkaptein and so was in the final weeks of his assignment.

“His Majesty is examining memos on munitions procurement from the Finance Ministry,” Horthy informed the head of Austrian military intelligence. “You may enter now.”

Ronge pushed through the doors to the study, expecting and finding the Emperor sitting at his ornate desk, with paperwork piled neatly on top of it as he examined some memoranda or other to be signed off. The opening of the doors caused him to look up from his tasks, to recognize his visitor. The Emperor stood, slowly due to his advanced age, and Ronge bowed deeply in his presence. The Emperor bid him to stand with a slight gesture.

“What has my army to report?” It was, as usual, a simple and direct question.

Ronge waited a half-second to consider where to start. Bad news first, then; the Emperor was not fond of flattery or dissimulation. “Your Majesty, the Evidenzburo has reason to believe that our great advantage is now eliminated. The disposition of the traitor Redl is now in your hands.”

The Emperor’s face contorted in a look of distaste at the unseemliness of the intelligence officer’s world. “We have made our position clear. It is not our desire that Herr Redl be subjected to public scrutiny, lest our peoples lose faith in my army. Nor is it our desire that Herr Redl be pressured into terminating his life in an unchristian manner, as several of my officers have wished. Are you certain that this moment has come at last?”

Ronge nodded glumly. “Yes, your Majesty. The Russians have begun openly suspecting that Redl is no longer a secure asset with the fall of Lublin. Our attack into Poland was much stronger than they could have believed possible according to the information on First and Fourth armies delivered to them by the traitor. The presence of 2nd Army on the Serbian border has certainly alerted them to the weakness of our position in eastern Galicia. We could try to continue to string the Russians along, but restoring his credibility would require the sacrifice of substantial assets to them.”

“Archduke Friedrich has assured me that my Third Army will be meeting the Russian foe presently,” the Emperor stated. “Such a collision will, as you say, reveal your subterfuge.” Franz Josef, the man, rather wished that Franz Josef the Emperor had not had to assert a far greater interest in the goings-on of the dirty intelligence service after the Redl Affair had been revealed. Nevertheless, he had his duty. “We shall credit your expertise on the matter. And what do you suggest be done with this superfluous spy?”

Ronge pondered the matter carefully. He rather felt that Redl deserved to be drawn and quartered for his treason against Emperor and country. There was also the personal feelings of betrayal; Redl had taught him, and much of the Evidenzburo, everything they knew. There were few good options, though.

“A trial is, as your Majesty has indicated, out of the question.” He paused for a moment. “Nor is it acceptable to allow him the honorable way out.” The Emperor looked annoyed at the way he had characterized suicide, but remained silent. “Herr Redl has taken an interest in religion of late, perhaps to atone for his many sins.” Some of those were more disgusting than mere treason, though no one had felt like telling the Emperor about those.

“He has?” The Emperor looked mildly surprised. “That is well. No sinner is beyond redemption by the Lord.”

Ronge had plenty of experience to make him doubt that. “If your Majesty pleases, it may be possible to arrange for his sequestration in a quiet monastery, perhaps in some obscure part of Dalmatia. It will give him plenty of time to examine his soul and see if he can find a path to Christ.”

Franz Josef nodded his assent. “Arrange the details, Oberst Ronge. It is our will that if possible, Herr Redl is to be given every opportunity to find forgiveness from God.”

And if not, Ronge could always arrange to kill him. Such things weren’t ever discussed with the Emperor, who he suspected would be scandalized by the notion. But they could happen, from time to time. “As your Majesty wishes.”

“Is there anything more?” asked the Emperor. He really had to finish these memos before five o’clock, when he would take an unaccustomed meal in the dining hall. The visit of his daughter Marie Valerie and her children was one of the few joys left to him in the bitterness of his reign.

“Yes, your Majesty,” Ronge indicated. “Our cryptography efforts have positively identified that the Russian advance into Eastern Galicia is aimed at Lemburg. Now they hope to force us to abandon our gains in Poland to meet their attack, perhaps preventing a union with German forces in the area.”

“The situation would seem to be more serious than General Conrad believes,” the Emperor stated simply.

“It would appear that way,” Ronge agreed. “The arrival of Second Army should improve matters.”

“The Almighty will arbitrate the war as He does everything else in this world.” The Emperor’s tone conveyed an absolute fatalism. “I trust you have alerted my generals of this new threat to my lands?”

“I dispatched a series of telegrams on Russian communications this morning”, Ronge affirmed.

“Your have our gratitude for your exemplary service to our military.” It was a high honor to be thanked by the Emperor, but also a serious signal. The audience was over. Ronge bowed again, deeply from the waist, before backing out of the room slowly. The Emperor sat back down and began reading his memos once more, and did not look up as the intelligence head exited the study.

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Eight.

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.

10 Downing Street
31 August 1914


It was an unusual Monday morning meeting for the cabinet. But there was altogether a great deal of business to be done. The situation in Europe had occupied the cabinet for the past two months, to be sure, but the situation in Ireland was steadily becoming a much more critical component of the operation.

The men who ruled the Empire were gathered around this table, with a cloud of tobacco smoke hanging in the air. The most important today were, in no particular order, Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary; David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer; Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty; Richard Burdon Haldane, Viscount Haldane, the Lord Chancellor; Reginald McKenna, the Home Secretary; Lewis Vernon Harcourt, the Colonial Secretary; and Augustine Birrel, the Chief Secretary for Ireland.

Above them all was Herbert Henry Asquith. The Prime Minister was an enthusiastic supporter of intervening to aide France and he had made it clear that much of his agenda for this meeting was in finding ways to extend the maximum possible support to the French; the rest of it was to deal with Home Rule. Though it remained less important in his mind the later, unsurprisingly, came first.

“The Home Rule Act is now scheduled to receive Royal Assent on the 18th of September,” Asquith began. “The Unionists are threatening rebellion if it passes, and there have been signs that additional discontent,” he avoided the word 'mutiny', though it was really the case, “is inevitable in the military. Fortunately, we do have some time. Even with Royal Assent given to the Act we have until the December vote on the amendments to exclude Ulster before the matter comes to a head.”

A ruffling silence in the room, hanging heavy with the sweet scent of the tobacco smoke, the old and splendid pictures on the wall, the twenty-three chairs lining the central table, filled with the men in their suits who ran a sixth of the world, but were faced with a nearly intractable problem in Ireland.

“Prime Minister, do you think that the exclusion bill for the northern counties will really avert bloodshed?” Haldane asked politely. His role as Lord Chancellor was somewhat limited and he held the personal distaste of Asquith for his pro-German policy, which for the moment seemed to be winning following the German assurances. Unfortunately he had a point here; there was no guarantee at all that the signers of the Ulster Covenant would be satisfied.

“Carson has stated quite firmly that he will not be satisfied with even the Nine Northern Counties, which makes the problem seem intractable; certainly there is no way that Redmond will be satisfied by a partition which retains all of Ulster under direct rule. If the Unionists refuse to negotiate on Home Rule than the six-county option is the only one available to us,” Asquith concluded.

“But will it be enough to lead to a dispersal of support for the Ulster Convenant?” Haldane pressed. The question was open-ended and Birrel answered.

“Your Lordship, that is frankly quite unlikely,” he said, settling back in the armless chair and regarding Haldane cautiously. “It must be understood that the situation in Ireland is such that we have two armed camps; each certainly has tens of thousands of rifles, and the Unionists can probably obtain quantities of artillery in short order after a general breach. An unknown number of the officers of the Irish regiments, but perhaps as many as two-thirds, are unreliable, and we have definite information of an extensive conspiracy reaching as far as the former Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, and the Earl Roberts.”

“Then it would appear that the full attention of the Empire must be focused on averting this crisis before we reach the unthinkable point of civil bloodshed,” Viscount Haldane concluded.

“I am not sure that is possible,” Lloyd-George, the firey welshman, countered in an ominous voice. “Hundreds of thousands of Irish Protestants and their wives have made themselves party to the Ulster Covenant and the attached petition; these men have committed themselves to any means necessary, notwithstanding war and treason, to retain their domination over the Catholic population of Ireland. Carson has himself in public proposed preparations for a provisional government for Ulster which we must assume have already been made; more to the point, however, he is not from Ulster himself, nor holds any particular connection to it, and it seems that with that considered his commitment to retaining protestant authority over the whole of Ireland is sincere and immutable.”

“Well, there is no point in alienating both sides,” Asquith said. “And if the compromise causes the unionist movement to break down on regional lines, with those in the affected counties not rising so that they may preserve their rights under the Amending Bill, then it would be quickly suppressed, without much difficulty or popular outrage. The bulk of the protestant movement in Ireland is in those six counties, and it would be sufficient to cut off the rest from its manpower, arms, and support, to make any danger of civil war collapse and to guarantee the safe promulgation of the Act over the rest of Ireland.”

“With respect, Prime Minister,” Reginald McKenna, the Home Secretary and thus with a real vested interest in this matter, began, “I feel that additional efforts at compromise must be attempted. It could be well possible that a nine-county solution would be accepted by the majority of the nationalists, to the point that Redmond's claims otherwise would be discredited and he would back down. At any rate, the Irish Volunteers under Redmond are much less heavily armed than the Unionists and have little support in the army, whereas the cause of Irish Protestantism is bound to have extensive support in Scotland due to the historical ties, and any civil conflict in Ireland might well spread to general disorder throughout the country. There is little that can be done, it appears, to halt the smuggling of arms, and that creates a powderkeg throughout the nation. If at all possible the Nationalists should be forced to accept the removal of all Ulster from the competence of the Home Rule Act in the hope that any outbreak of violence can thus be forestalled from the Unionists.”

“Nobody shall get guns through to Ireland again on the Navy's watch,” Churchill growled softly as he held his cigar rather like a weapon and interjected the comment into the conversation with equal intensity. “The Larne incident succeeded only through its brazenness, and that the idea of loyal Unionists arming against the government was before then entirely unthinkable.”

Asquith prevaricated for the moment, and ignored Churchill. “More negotiations will certainly be necessary. The reality of the Royal Assent when it is formally given may perhaps force some sense into the Unionists and avoid the most unfortunate of consequences that we now face.”

A pause. He shuffled some papers, purely a distractory measure, and then continued. “Speaking of the Navy, Mister Churchill, what is the status of fleet operations in support of our neutrality?”

“The proposed programme of aggressive neutrality patrols has been commenced, largely with success,” Churchill answered at once. He was referring to the very dubious programme of a broad range of cruiser and gunboat patrols through the Atlantic to search for 'contraband' and seize ships carrying it toward (what the Captain of the RN vessel in question) determined to be the port of a belligerent. After a pause for a puff on his cigar he continued: “Unfortunately, we were unable to do anything about the mining of the Belts; the Baltic is effectively closed to merchant shipping, save through,” another growl, “the Kiel Canal.”

“Will they allow ships through?”

Sir Edward Grey answered that question. “The Germans are of course inspecting all transits of the Kiel Canal for contraband and saboteurs, but have not halted merchant shipping through it. I have made it clear to the German Ambassador that we consider free merchant traffic into the Baltic very important; though the German and Danish actions in the Belts have made that impossible through international waters the Germans seem willing to keep the canal open, though of course it is impossible to trade war materiale with Russia through it. It does, however, make Ottoman neutrality a pressing issue, and with it, the fact that the protests from the Ottoman government over the seizure of their dreadnoughts building in our yards have become increasingly more virulent.”

“The Dreadnoughts are British, and will stay that way,” Churchill emphatically punched out. “We cannot afford to weaken the fleet when there is every chance that Germany will stand victorious against us with a prostrate France forced to cede over her fleet to the Kaiser's ambitions. The Turks can bluster but no more; if they enter a war against us it is scarcely likely that they could delay a fleet pushing through the Straits for more than a few hours, and then we would handily restore full merchant traffic to the Russian Empire.

“I would furthermore go so far as to recommend that expanded shipbuilding efforts be undertaken, and that in addition to the Turkish and Chilean dreadnoughts that we made efforts to buy ships of the Brazilian, Argentine, Spanish, and even Japanese navies which are of dreadnought rate to augment our own forces.”

“We have sustained a naval race for an extensive length of time,” Lloyd-George countered, “and the amount of money put into it is unacceptable. The Germans are now waging a land war; who is to think that they shall be able to spend a single pence on new naval construction when they need artillery and rifles and munitions? This, if anything, would be the time to slack in construction to save money; whereas if there is a German victory we can match their increased building rate as necessary.”

“What sort of programme increases are you proposing?” Asquith inquired of Churchill after Lloyd-George's comments.

“Re-ordering of the cancelled ships of the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes, to be laid down in nineteen fifteen. Also, an improved Tiger, as was proposed in the 1913 estimates, save armed with the 14in rifles the Russians ordered for their own battlecruisers which we can no longer reliably deliver, for the same year. That will reduce her costs; as for the rest, the Turkish and Chilean ships on the slips should be completed, and a serious effort made to raise additional funds from Australia and Canada for the construction of two additional ships, either to be laid down next year or in nineteen sixteen.”

“That is five dreadnoughts in nineteen fifteen,” Lloyd-George stated wearily.

“Yes, it is, but we have many of the materials for them on hand already, so the costs will not be greater than three,” Churchill replied smugly, not bothering to mention that the completion of the Chilean and Turkish ships would of course be additional. He continued after a moment: “We are already behaving very aggressively toward the Germans in regard to our policy viz. contraband and patrols at sea,” a chuckle, “which will also be useful, I grant, in regard to the Irish Question. But regardless the pertinent point is that we should expect that sooner or later we will be drawn into this conflict. We must arm our navy for that purpose.”

“I do not think that this cabinet should commit to a parliamentary agenda of funding such a building schedule without more careful consideration, Mister Churchill, but the logic of the matter seems unfortunately impeccable. It will be given full attention throughout the upcoming agenda, regardless.”

“Very well then, Prime Minister. That brings the matter to the table of the proposed restrictions in access by combatant vessels to our harbour facilities both here in the British Isles and the colonies,” Churchill continued. “In this it is generally the conclusion of the Admiralty's law experts that we may search for, and confiscate, contraband on private vessels which dock for any purpose in our ports, but cannot hamper the legitimate rights of refueling and safe harbour for German warships. This should, at least, seriously limit German trade across the Atlantic due to a lack of easy refueling stations.”

“Can this policy be implemented at once?”

“Certainly.” There was no dissent, though Haldane seemed quietly irate at the level of provocation involved in the declaration; yet he was not important enough in this cabinet to halt the measure, which had Asquith and Grey's full support. Churchill ignored him and continued.

“It should be, furthermore, possible to block off German access to the Mediterranean, if certain pressure is applied to the Spanish government, who's francophile sympathies are well-known; this should in fact not be difficult at all for us to accomplish.”

“It would also be a rather severe violation of international law,” Haldane at last spoke once more.

“I am quite confident that the experts of the Admiralty, having virtually formulated maritime law in its long history, are well aware of any possible violations.”

“They are, and they've signed off on these measures,” Churchill replied smugly. Britain for the most part decided maritime law to its own advantage, and nobody was in a position to complain.

Asquith accepted the statement with a nod and then looked severely to Haldane. “I do not see the need for German ships to operate in the Mediterranean beyond their so-called Mittelmeerdivision which has already been causing so much distress to our diplomats in Turkey, and who's position there is frankly already a flagrant violation of maritime law—it is obvious that the ships have not been sold to Turkey at all, and retain equally obviously German crews—and the Germans are, therefore in no real position to complain.

“Equally, we have another serious matter which must be dealt with thanks to the operations of their Admiral von Spee in the Pacific with the Tsingtao squadron; namely, the safety of the New Hebrides.” Asquith looked to his ready ally in Sir Edward Grey. “I believe very much that it should be made clear to the German government that any military operations in the territorial waters of the Condominion of the New Hebrides would be construed by the government of Britain as a hostile act.”

“That situation seems rather clear-cut, I acknowledge,” Haldane allowed. “As a condominion the New Hebrides must be effectively considered a separate territory for military purposes.”

“The Germans certainly have no right to dictate the status of the New Hebrides in any way, let alone to engage in military operations in their vicinity as though they were French territory,” Sir Edward agreed—if more vigorously—and then added: “I shall be glad to relay this message to the German Ambassador.”

“Very well, then,” Asquith replied, and then paused for a moment and lifted a copy of a telegraphed note up. “This is from General Alfred Knox, who is our observer with the Russian Second Army under General Samsonov. 'Samsonov's 2nd Army has been engaged in very intense combat with the better part of three German armies, two of near-equal size and one appreciably larger; I estimate the Russian losses to be on the order of a hundred thousand casualties plus three hundred guns taken by the enemy on the sector of Second Army. 2nd Army has succeeded in escaping enemy pursuit on two fronts and retreating in the direction of Brest.. But with only three corps, and all of these having suffered heavy casualties. Pursuit continues from the northwest, but Samsonov is now confident that this threat by itself can be handled by the remains of 2nd Army, and a position around Brest stabilized. Losses by Russian 1st Army are reported to be worse, and the whole Russian offensive into Galicia has been disrupted by this. Warsaw is believed under threat by the German forces with which 2nd Army was previously engaged.'”

Asquith let the news sink into the cabinet for a moment, and then concluded the meeting: “Gentlemen, the Russian performance here indicates that France shall, regardless of her current successes in Alsace, likely soon be hard pressed. We must make every effort to see that Germany is not allowed to thus end up the master of the continent, and we cannot forget that even as we attempt to solve the Irish Question. Good day to you all.”


ROYAL PALACE
BUCHAREST, RUMANIA
1 SEPTEMBER 1914


The Royal Palace of Bucharest was on the Calea Victoriei, the most European of Bucharest's streets, a grand and sprawling structure which had been begun by the wife of the first Prince of unified Rumania, around a still older structure of some grandeur, and ultimately reached its current fine Neoclassical configuration thanks to the work of the French architect Paul Gottereau. It was normally only the winter residence of King Carol of Rumania, but he had returned early from his usual summer residence on account of the events in the east which had developed with such surprising speed.

He had called the State Council to session at once. Constantin Bratianu, the current Prime Minister, was very much in favour of pursuing a policy against Austria for sake of the irredentist effort in Transylvania. Most of the State Council was on his side. The King was of German origin, having come to the Rumanian throne in disguise through Austria on the verge of the Seven Weeks War and having established himself by great effort as the ruler of the nation. He was now an old man, seventy-five years old, and ailing, but he had lost none the inner moral will which characterized his earlier reign; as his wife said of him, 'he wore the crown even while sleeping'.

King Carol had been following events in Poland with great interest. The old Kingdom, having been first attached to the crown of the Tsars and then annexed directly, was currently the sight of the principle fighting in the largest and most spread out military conflict fought in Europe since the Seven Weeks War, perhaps longer. Now, though, the Germans and the Austrians fought together and their opponents were Russia and France; the French had made some progress in the west but that was irrelevant to Rumania. What was relevant were the tremendous German victories in the east, and it was precisely on account of them that the State Council had been summoned.

King Carol had already made his desire to intervene on the side of Germany and Austria clear. He had warned the Russians that troop movements in Besserabia would be considered a hostile act, and he already pressed the State Council. They had, of course, refused. Besserabia was a minor, poverty-stricken area of goatherds; the real traditional national land and what they saw as the prosperity of Rumania would come in Transylvania, at the expense of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But events in Poland had changed this, certainly in the King's eye, and furthermore he had a piece in reserve, so to speak.

His own State Council did not know that he had a treaty with Austria which technically obliged them to war in this circumstance. He had previously not dared tell them, for it might seriously undermine his rule that he had concluded the treaty with Austria and kept it a personal secret for himself. Since the war had begun the Russians had been pressing him and the Rumanian government with promises of Transylvania—which now seemed hollow—and the Germans of Besserabia, while making appeals to his ancestry that he took personally enough. It did not, after all, counteract the best interests of his nation in this circumstance, which were certainly a German alliance.

A meeting of all the party leaders, both of the government, and the opposition, was scheduled. Here King Carol had intended to bring forth the secret treaty regardless; the changed military circumstances, however, gave him hope that an early revelation to the government alone might be of great use, and allow the result of the grand meeting to become a foregone conclusion in favour of a Rumanian declaration. Therefore had the State Council been summoned.

King Carol began, gruffly: “Gentlemen, We have summoned you here on account of the great victories by the German Army operating in Poland. The City and Fortress of Kovno have fallen to the Kaiser's cavalry several days ago, and all reports indicate that two Russian Armies and indeed their entire northwestern force have been overthrown. The Austrians have defeated a Russian force of strength as well and taken Lublin and are so secure in their position there that they let their pet Poles make speeches from the old fortress of Casimir. It is certainly only a matter of time until Warsaw, Brest, and Vilnius fall to the armies of the two allies. This absolutely rules out any alliance with Russia or effort to regain Transylvania.”

“In the tentative face of circumstance, Your Majesty, I would agree,” Constantin Bratianu agreed politely. “Though I would submit, Your Majesty, that it does not rule out such an alliance completely. The Austrian offensive into Serbia has been entirely repulsed, and the Austrians have scarcely maintained the Sava. The Russian armies in the south are as of yet untested and we may see all these so-called victories of the Germans and Austrians swept aside by Russian arms on that front, where any effort at encircling Warsaw could be lost via the effect of Russian armies operating in Galicia.”

“We do not see the Austrian losses in Serbia as more than a temporary reversal, and there is no sign that the Russians shall manage any of the success which you propose. Their armies are in shambles and are being forced back wherever the Germans or the Austrians advance,” King Carol replied firmly. “The Germans have offered us Besserabia; the people of Besserabia are fundamentally Rumanian, speaking the Rumanian tongue and having every right of reintegration into Rumania as the people of Transylvania. This war gives us an opportunity to gain one and not the other; let us take the one that it gives the chance to seize.”

“With respect, Your Majesty, I have no desire to commit this nation to war on the side of Austria. The Trasylvanian population is ruthlessly oppressed by their German and Hungarian overlords and the region is at once more prosperous and wealthier, and more populous and more firmly Rumanian, than Besserabia. The Besserabian connections with Rumania are more tenuous, it is smaller, agricultural—indeed, even primitive—and it does not make sense for us to gain Besserabia when we lose the chance to restore Trasylvania to the whole of the Rumanian nation, Sire.”

“To assume such an opportunity exists now under these military circumstances is foolhardy.”

Constantin stiffened at the insult but did not respond, as he had to. After a moment, though, he spoke over the soft murmurs of a few of the other members of the State Council. “Your Majesty, we do not know yet, simply, if this situation is a real sign of the course of the war or simply temporary reversals on the part of the Russian Empire. Neutrality serves us best for the moment.”

“Perhaps that is so.” King Carol offered, and then continued more ominously than before: “But there is another factor to consider. We are bound by treaty to go to the aide of Austria. A treaty concluded under Our sovereign prerogatives to bind us into a mutual defensive arrangement with the Habsburg Empire, which has now been activated by the Russian aggression against the Dual-Monarchy.”

The State Council was in shock and they showed it. Constantin was trembling in rage, as a matter of fact, as he looked to the cool, grim old man who ruled his native land, yet was very much German now, still speaking Rumanian with a teutonic accent. It was a hate, but he forced his bile down; the military situation scarcely allowed for any action to be taken. The King was, for all his faults, starkly correct in his assessment though Constantin did not want to admit it. Taking Transylvania was for the moment impossible and moving against Carol unwise; but that did not mean that they should side with Germany or Austria. Neutrality remained the best course.

“Your Majesty, such an alliance—which I would remind Your Majesty is tenuous under the standing constitution at best—is not something we can adhere to if it is against the best interests of the Rumanian nation. We cannot go to war now on account of it alone; this might, indeed, cause serious dissensions among the people.”

“The Russians are being defeated on all fronts; the French are scarcely doing well in Lorraine, having been thrown back to Verdun, regardless of their supposed success in Alsace. The Germans have defeated perhaps fifteen corps of the Russian army, destroying most of them, and the Austrians have done the same to another three. There is for all intents and purposes no Russian Army left in Poland. At Kovno the garrison simply disintegrated despite being in fortified positions, at the approach of mere cavalry. The Russians are no more prepared for this conflict than they were when they were trounced by the mere Asiatics in 1905.”

“Yet the magnitude of their defeats, Your Majesty, is still not enough for us to yet risk the nation in what is a titanic struggle of the powers.”

“Then what shall be enough, Constantin Bratianu? Shall We try the German commitment to us? Let Us do that; We shall ask for artillery, for rifles, for bullion, and for the Black Sea coast as far as Odessa as well as Besserabia, and the Transdniestr besides. Do you think we will be denied a promise of these things? We do not; they would be mere pinpricks to the vastness of the Tsar's domains upon a peace, and the material wealth but mere pinpricks to the budget of the greatest industrial nation upon the planet.”

The Prime Minister realized that under the circumstances a compromise would be well-advised; and certainly he was not adverse to gaining Besserabia. He simply feared that it would deny them any good chance at ever gaining Transylvania. So he spoke carefully. “Your Majesty, if all of those things can be secured from the Germans, then it would be very good indeed. But let us wait and see what happens at Warsaw, at Novo Georgievsk, at Brest, and at Vilnius, before we commit to war.”

The old King listened, and nodded. “You are not insensible, and your caution is indeed, perhaps, wisdom, Constanin Bratianu. Very well. We shall ask further of the Germans; and if their guarantees are given, we shall wait, and see the fate of those three cities and that great fortress, and then we will choose our course of action, before the representatives of the whole nation at the scheduled conference on the matter.”

“Certainly, Your Majesty. The government would be wholly in concurrence with that course of action.”


WEGRÓW POLAND
1 SEPTEMBER 1914


It was a nervous day. The German 1st Army had been marching toward Otwock when it had received word of significant Russian forces detraining at Siedlice. Von Kluck had been forced to countermarch, though he was not entirely unprepared for it on account of the fact that there were only two possible routes toward his army; one through Lublin to Warsaw on the railroad, and the other from Lublin north to Siedlice. That the enemy had chosen the later made sense though they could have easily gone the other way; yet this would have, most likely, jammed the railroads to much for the Russians to consider it an easy option. As matters stood the position of 4th Army was still, however, not bad; indeed, Alexander von Kluck did not have a firm idea of where they were, but had simply pressed on toward Siedlice in hope of making touch with the Russians.

The 2nd Brandenburg Dragoons had been riding hard for days and Margrete Hoffmeyer felt it in every part of her body by that point, the constant ache of hard riding for days on end leaving her so thoroughly sore that she did not even dwell on the memories of combat. They were now approaching Wegrow, but had stopped before the town for a badly needed lunch, and to water the horses. From the moment their horses had been watered they slumped down to a lunch of bread and jerky and nuts, all cold.

The horses were tethered somewhat to the rear and they were clustered by squad, now, eating and drinking the water they had drawn from the same place in a little creek-fed pond as their own horses had drunk; closer, they were, to those horses than to anyone else in the world save their comrades. Margrete was glad to be in the dragoons, where her own 'Sturdy' wouldn't be under much threat of any enemy fire; the charge of the Cuirassiers at her own first action had been marvelous, but also as bloody for beast as for man.

Margrete, who lived in the regiment and had no intention of it being otherwise, did not need very much of her pay to get by with, at all; but as a practical matter she had found it useful to expend some of it on her comrades, for the sake of gaining a reputation as one of them, generous and helpful when they needed money for their girl-friends or to send to ill parents and so on. In this way she dispelled some of the tension which might have existed, and any temptations on their part; but her generousity had gradually come about for its own sake, and reaffirmed by her desire to repudiate the usual reputation of Jews as not only lacking in nationality loyalty—which she was sure she had after the action at Wyszkow where she might have previously doubted herself—and also as hoarders of money; she saved none, it was either spent for herself or given away, and it made her feel that much more of a German and a Brandenburger than a Jew.

A feeling with some real regret in it, that she had effectively abandoned her religion (though she kept the Torah as well as able—easy enough considering nobody asked what was in the sausage the army served, leaving no reason for her to start—it was probably worse than mere pork anyway) in favour of service, and escape from her family and the cloistered, heavy atmosphere of the German Jewish communities which seemed almost incestuous.

Now, though, there was little time for thought. Not enough, after all, even for coffee. As an alternative they smoked, of course. The air of the brief encampment was thick with feelings of impending action; the Russians might, after all, be over the next hill. So Margrete splurged and handed out the contents of a pack of Abdullahs after saving two for herself. “Enjoy some REAL tobacco while you can—for you might not have another chance,” she offered with a half-wicked and half gentle grim laugh.

They were all veterans now and shared it. “My god, I don't know where you get the money for these fine things,” their korporal explained—he was married, which was why he didn't have the money himself, though not particularly brilliant it had probably never occurred to him. But they were all very brave, and that was what counted. He lit his up and drew a contented drag, holding the smoke in before slowly exhaling: “A right angel of mercy you are--Markus.”

There was a low roll of laughter around the group. They all knew her real name by now, leaving her registered name with the regimental roll as something which sparked the occasional joke in the open, and a lot more after rollcall, which she handled well enough, again for the sake of fitting in.

As Margrete finished her first cigarette there was a shout from down the line. “COSSACKS!”

She shifted, still sitting, to see a brace of riders in traditional cossack dress burst forth on the low ridge beyond their own (the ground was very flat, but flat was deceptive, for it undulated)—they hadn't be crazy enough to rest in a vale, even though it meant a long walk to the water—they had a standard with them, though she did not know what regiment it was (it was the 14th Host Ataman Yefremov's Don Cossack Regiment) and the moment they saw the Germans there they produced their carbines and plied on a fire from the saddle as if every man had acted on the same thought at the same moment, of their own volition.

It was really quite the fine display of shooting, too, and Margrete was more irate about that as anything else as she threw herself into the turf at once and the rest of the men of the squadron followed. The order from their commanding officer to “Form skirmish line—prone! Independent fire!” in short succession was obeyed at once, though they had none of the ability of the Cossacks to open up in the snap of a moment.

Under the steadily increasing fire of the Mauser carbines of the 2nd Brandenburg, the Don Dossacks pressed forward with a merry disregard for life, artfully handling their horses and maintaining a startingly rapid fire from the saddle. The commander of the regiment got away two mounted couriers, sent back toward corps headquarters, and then ordered a withdrawal, the order echoing down the lines with some relief and some frustration, for the strength of their position had afterall not even really been tested.

The little battle had only lasted fifteen minutes and had not been nearly so bloody; a skirmish, really; though the fighting continued even as they fell back, their riflery managing to keep the Cossacks off them long enough to hastily mount up and fall back, though there were groans from everyone as some of the stores had to be abandoned. But this, ironically, secured their unencumbered pursuit; the Cossacks, having driven away the enemy and reported on his position, did not think twice of pausing to loot.

It was in fact the beginning of a great clash of armies.


E. OF ALYTUS, RUSSIA
1 SEPTEMBER 1914


The Russians retreating across the River Niemen at Alytus were now cut off. Four cavalry corps had swept down between them and the city of Vilnius, and after a short fight with the forces they encountered strung out in line of march on the road toward Vilnius, which they scattered with their sabres, three of the corps (far smaller than infantry corps of course), had swung into complete the trapping of Russian 1st Army against the River Niemen. The last of the corps had swung in pursuit of those forces which had gotten clear.

The scene was one of total despair for the Russians. With two divisions of cavalry in hot pursuit the peasants scattered, seeking safety from the German charges in the forest. A great string of artillery, of supply wagons, even of abandoned trains due to the clogging of the single-track line and the failure of the signals system; all of these things were captured as the German cavalry advanced. Scattered piles of rifles marked where units had thrown them away enmasse and fled. Clothes were the only thing not abandoned; what the peasants had been issued was frequently lacking but a Russian peasant would never abandon a decent coat and a pair of boots.

Many prisoners were taken as well. Some were from national minorities which had been essentially press-ganged into the army and were glad to be out. Some were simply peasants hoping for a hot meal. Some were confused, or trapped, or had simply grown sick of the hard fighting where they had held their own against the Germans for three weeks at three-to-one odds and finally had simply had to much to stand and fight any longer.

Despite all of that a few rearguard operations were conducted; units stood valiantly against the cavalry and inflicted losses when the German horse approached. But the Germans relied on speed and swiftness to surround and cut off most of these pockets, or to take them head on in a charge with the advantage of numbers. None of them halted the Germans, and the garrison of Vilnius did well to prepare to stand a siege.

Thus did Russian 1st Army end; it had fought well, against three times its numbers, and in the end only the cavalry had definitely doomed it. Even now a few units still fought in inside of Alytus, but they would not last long. Most of the peasants had figured they had done enough for the Tsar by that point, and surrendered in such numbers that the Germans could not really cope with them. But it was even so just one of the Tsar's armies, and the battle continued for every other.


TESCHEN, AUSTRIAN SILESIA
1 SEPTEMBER 1914


General der Infanterie Franz Conrad Graf von Hötzendorf had just received news from Galicia. As the Chief of Staff of Armeeoberkommando he had to deliver the news to Generalfeldmarschall Erherzog Friedrich which they had both been expecting—he in particular, since the whole scandal with the Evidenzburo had started nearly three years ago, as a matter of fact—but it was a more pertinent military situation as well, now.

He saluted to Erherzog Friedrich as he approached, the evening having already reached Teschen, with night indeed now upon them, and the electric lighting of the headquarters thus marvelously useful and still a bit unusual to the General—certainly he did not, as openly agnostic as he was, feel any particular need to keep to the old Catholic day, divided by church-prayers; if he did he would have called this hour Vespers. “Your Grace, a moment, please,” he offered as he gestured to a map.

“Go right ahead, General.” Erherzog Friedrich looked on in interest, though as usual if Conrad asked him something specific he was prepared to sign off on it.

Conrad nodded graciously and began at once to outline the situation precisely in just a few words. “General der Kavallerie von Brudermann's Third Army's operational headquarters has just reported in. Today they have fought a series of meeting engagements with Russian forces present in unknown strength around Bus'k. The Russians are advancing in force. Kövess Force is now falling back and Burdermann has announced his intention to attack to relief Kövess.

“In short, it's begun, Your Grace. The Russians no longer believe our ruse, and not only is our intelligence source now no longer useful to us but we also have a rather serious offensive developing from the Russian southwestern front.”

“Second Army's dispositions reflect this, however, yes?”

“That's correct, Your Grace. It's now a question of time, if Burdermann can hold out,” Conrad did not like the fellow, “or not until Second Army can deploy and counterattack.”

“Thank you for informing me, though it now seems a matter for God.”

Perhaps God, and perhaps the Fates, Conrad mused. The next day would tell him altogether much more, and he would just have to wait until then.

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Nine

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.


BUS’K, GALICIA
SEPTEMBER 2nd, 1914


The advance of the Russian armies into Galicia had not been subtle or hesitant. Spurred on by shame at deception and panic over the collapse of the situation in Poland, Southwestern Front was attacking with its full power towards Lemburg. The fall of the fortress city would, it was hoped, cause the Austrians to recoil and thus allow trapped Russian formations a way out of Poland. And at any rate, with the reported presence of Austrian Second Army in Serbia and the attacking Austro-Hungarian forces in Poland much stronger than they had been led to believe, it was patently obvious that Galicia was the only front where the Russians had a potentially overpowering superiority of strength and were in position to achieve a victory. General Alexeyev, the Chief of Staff for the Front, had engaged the commander of Russian Third Army in a vigorous dressing-down by telegraph to make sure that he knew the seriousness of the situation and the demands placed upon him. General Brusilov, the commander of Eighth Army, needed no such urgings and moved with haste against the screening force of the Kövess Gruppe.

The exchanges of communications between the Russian armies and their theater headquarters allowed the Austrian intelligence service full access to the general Russian intentions. General der Infanterie Kövess, commanding two detached corps of 2nd Army, had little choice but to retreat under the relentless forward advance of Brusilov, fighting only a handful of delaying actions to provide flank security to Third Army. With the information on the Russian intentions in hand, the commander of Third Army resolved to attack the Russians and throw off their advance timetable until Second Army arrived to reinforce the front. That all available intelligence indicated that Kövess could not halt a determined thrust by the enemy’s Eighth army, and that Austrian Third Army was inferior in nearly all respects to Russian Third Army, did not dissuade General der Kavallerie Rudolf von Brudermann. He would attack aggressively with his strong cavalry formations as the Russians crossed the Bug River near Bus’k, scoring a decisive victory on a constrained Russian force, perhaps allowing Third Army time to reorient itself and catch Eighth Army between two fires.

Meeting engagements between the two Third Armies took place on the 1st of September. Austrian dragoons and hussars clashed with Cossacks up and down a front extending eighty kilometers, in bloody and quick skirmishes that took a toll on the outnumbered Imperial cavalry. General Brudermann was discomfited by the presence of strong Russian forces already across the Bug, and even more by the relative lack of success of his beloved cavalry arm. His finest horsemen, the cavalry of 11th Honvéd division, had been held back for the decisive meeting in the morning, allowing him to reassure himself somewhat. He finalized the assault plan prepared by his chief of staff before retiring to bed early, as his nine infantry divisions readied themselves to attack the Russians at first light.

Dawn saw the opening up of Austrian artillery batteries on Russian targets sighted by the forward cavalry patrols as well as on positions estimated from a pre-war cartographic map of the area. As the Austrian howitzers shelled the suspected positions of the Russians, the enemy replied in kind to a number of marshalling points scouted by their Cossacks. Field guns were positioned to fire over the lines of advance for the Austrian artillery and began softening up the distant Russian lines as soon as the bigger howitzers had opened up. Russian counter-battery fire followed afterward, and showed no regard for conserving supplies or even a particular fixation with accuracy. The greater numbers of the available Russian guns did however exact a toll on the Austrian artillery, until the Austrian tubes were forced out of supporting the advance to duel with their counterparts. Brudermann dismissed the artillery duel as of little consequences; as long as the artillery of both sides focused on each other it would not affect the battle either way, leaving it to be decided by élan and determination.

The advance began with precise timing at ten o’clock in the morning, with the regimental bands finishing off a rendition of the Radetzkymarsch as the troops of the first columns fixed bayonets and advanced at the double-pace. Their officers led the advance from the front, drawing their swords and waving on the infantry with them, while the units took up various shouts according to their nationality. Behind them, the cavalry massed with gleaming sabers and archaic plumed helmets standing out, ready to exploit the success of the sharp knock to the Russians surely to be delivered by the Habsburg regiments. Alone among the formations the Czech units advanced without full confidence and determination; even the Ruthenians, whose ability to tell the difference between the Russians and Austrians was of some dispute, were in high spirits. No one doubted that they were going to break through the Russian lines and keep advancing until they reached the river.


AUSTRIAN LEFT


Infantry Regiment 28 of the KuK Armee bore the name of Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, and was staffed overwhelmingly with Czech conscripts. A cynical major of the unit had wondered openly if the fates were being tempted by this combination. Whether or not the command of Third Army agreed, the regiment and its parent division had been given the extreme left of the front with nebulous orders to “maintain pressure upon the Russians” facing them. The unit’s battalions advanced with the rest of the army in the general attack on the Russians, presenting the archaic and almost Napoleonic spectacle of an attack in column with the bayonet. Whereas many of their surrounding units pressed the attack with energy and decision, Regiment 28 seemed to be going through the motions. The Oberst of the regiment, furious at their poor display of belligerence, rode out to their head and encouraged them onward, as their own officers brandished their swords towards the Russian entrenchments.

Their pace quickened as the enemy trench-line came into view and the encouragement of the officers bolstered their resolve. That moment of high energy seemed to collapse as the Russian rifles and machine guns to their front opened up on them, sending a continuous hail of bullets into the regiment. The leading wave of infantry stood up to the assault and continued to press home largely due to the example of their officers, who remained in open view of the enemy even as the resolve of the common soldiers wavered. The officers were paying an appalling price to lead the reluctant conscripts onward, as they were more exposed and their swords and bearing made them stand out to Russian sharpshooters. A fresh impetus, perhaps a realization that a retreat under fire was more dangerous than continuing to advance, seized hold of the Czechs. The scramble into the trenches that followed abandoned any notion of mass or formation in favor of simply getting into the trenches, and thus out of the line of fire for the Russian arms, as quickly as possible. The Russians inside the trenches stepped up their rate of fire in an effort to keep them out, and came under direct fire themselves at close range.

Here in the center of the lines a Czech squad vaulted into the narrow trenches, bayonets held out front to ward off Russian attackers. They shot and stabbed the Russians they found, and came under attack by another group armed with shovels and entrenchment tools. Blood soaked into the ground as soldiers were impaled, shot, battered, and beaten in a flurry of close-quarters violence that most Europeans had supposed had disappeared with the coming of the musket. Without any officers to restrain them, the victorious Czechs took out their blood frenzy on the few Russians who had been merely wounded instead of killed outright in the fierce melee, bayoneting them out of hand. After the adrenaline of the moment wore off, some of the soldiers fell down to their knees in the muck and blood of the trench and began to weep. Others tried to peer further east at the rest of the Russians, and ducked their heads down instinctively as another round of ferocious fire began from a second set of Russian positions. There was no thought of continuing to drive on as their officers and NCOs had insisted was the battle plan.

Seconds seem to stretch out to minutes in the trench, filled with dead bodies of Russian soldiers and several of their comrades, with blood pooling on the floor and the steady maddening sound of battle coming their way. Some of the first group made contact with other bodies of Austrian soldiers, fellow Czechs milling about in relative security in the trenches, and began evaluating their situation a bit more. Surviving NCOs showed up and began organizing the troops back into something like organization, even as Russian forces in other parts of the trenches began to coalesce in groups. More confused fighting followed in the trenches as the survivors of the Russian defense group attempted to throw out the Czechs. At first it seemed as if the Russians had the advantage in ferocity and surprise, despite the efforts of the sergeants, and the ground was slicked with more blood as they bulled through the earthworks. Bodies were stacking up and covering the ground, making it impossible for either side to fight without stepping on top of one or two former comrades or enemies. Finally, as the Russians seemed to hold the advantage the second wave of Czech soldiers arrived over the trench line and began firing down on the surviving Russians. The counterattack was broke, and the surviving Russians threw down their rifles and shovels; this time, however, some of the officers survived to shout orders to take them prisoner.

The arrival of “reinforcements”, though ragged and battered themselves from the sweep to the trenches, restored some manner of coherency to the Czech soldiers. Surviving officers began to appear, and with the NCOs began arranging ad-hoc squads to begin the assault on the second line of Russian defenses. The surviving soldiers obeyed orders grudgingly, being extremely loath to risk their lives storming more Russians after the carnage and slaughter they had seen and participated in. Their grim NCOs gravitated to the rear of the trenches, setting up an impromptu cordon to insure the Czech privates went forward. The arrival of a pair of machine-guns at the rim of the trench provided a breathing space for the exhausted infantry, as the detachment took it upon itself to provide covering fire for the assault. The whistling sound of shells passing overhead gave the prospect of artillery support, and behind them the rest of the regiment was rapidly coming up. Finally the officers gave the signal to swarm up for the attack…

Rifle and machine gun fire met them as they clambered up from the earth, intent on closing the distance as quickly as possible. Many of them went down, but the firing seemed lighter this time, and the distance was less. The private soldiers pushed on with a renewed energy towards the Russians, with only this last obstacle between them and success, with reinforcements ready to be brought up to exploit the gap…

Then suddenly artillery rounds began bursting into their formation as batteries of Russian field guns opened up, even as heavier howitzers were firing into the trenches they had just vacated and among the main body of the regiment. The Russian trenchline ceased fire for a moment, but then saw large bodies of Russian men swarm up out of the trenches ready to counterattack on the open field. From the extreme flank of the regiment a cry of fear was taken up. A shout of dismay, of “Cossacks!” went down the still advancing Austrian line, as the Russian cavalry swept down into the flank of the regiment’s vanguard. The Russian artillery continued firing into the regiment as a major body of Russian troops, part of another brigade, came up to reinforce the defenders and their counterattack. As the Russian infantry from the trenches began to close in on the Austrian force, and the Russian lancers collided into the regiment’s flank, all pretence of order left the vanguard. It collapsed in disarray back towards the regiment’s main body, panicking the rest of the Czechs and throwing off their preparations to meet the Russian attack. With the Russian cavalry breaking through and cutting behind the regiment as it advanced, outnumbered, into the gleaming Russian bayonets, the regiment fell to pieces.

Small bands of Infantry Regiment 28 made a determined stand in the former Russian trenches. Larger parts of the regiment simply threw down their arms and surrendered to the Russian advance, or tried to flee past the Russian cavalry and were butchered down in doing so. A breach in the line of advance on the Austrian left was the result, as the Russian brigade passed through and its corps commander began feeding in more and more forces with the aim of collapsing the Austrian flank. What Brudermann had planned to do to the Russians was being done to him, and the Russian forces pouring around the left flank were in position to get across Third Army’s line of retreat. The rest of the assault was being repulsed with heavy losses, and within the hour a retreat was ordered; but if complete disaster was to be avoided the Russians had to be stopped from completing the destruction and encirclement of the Army.

The 11th Marschbrigade, a composite formation taken from spare battalions raised by the various regiment organizations upon mobilization as a sort of reserve of replacements, was thrown into the breach. Mostly Galicians and Ruthenians, they were fresh but lacked a common identity, taken as they had been from the battalions of six different regiments, some of which were not even present in Third Army. They had not been intended to see combat, and many were nervous at the prospect of facing a Russian opponent that had defeated the Army and now was pressing on victoriously. The commander of the unit, Generalmajor Alois von Schönburg, recognized the severity of the situation and resolved to lead the brigade in action himself. His officers had little choice but to follow his example, and in doing so provided inspiration to steady the private soldiers. The skillful positioning of the brigade in a stretch of woods on the line of the recoiling Third Army’s flank, ahead of the Russian advance, provided a strong defensive advantage to the brigade. As the afternoon lengthened they prepared to meet the onrushing Russian forces.

Cavalry, this time real Cossacks of the unruly irregular troops, made the first attempt to rush the Austrian positions. Having underestimated the strength of the Austrian reserve force and being overconfident in their victory, they spurred into a charge. The answering Austrian fire, delivered from behind cover of fallen timbers and supplemented with a full complement of machine guns, tore through the Russian lines. The momentum of the Cossacks collapsed almost immediately, leaving much of the front rank collapsed on the ground and throwing up the ranks behind. Austrian fire wreaked more execution among the Cossack forces even as they wheeled about in an attempt to break away in all directions from the murderous fire. They made no attempt to continue the attack and were finally driven off in complete disorder, though such a victory only disrupted the first edge of the screen of the advancing Russian corps.

The commander of the Russian forces, the timid Ruszky, now intervened directly in the initiative of his corps commander, and demanded a set-piece assault on the 11th Marschbrigade, a process that would waste precious time and throw away the precious initiative gained by the victory over the Austrian left flank. Nonetheless, the commander was obliged to follow the directives of his army, and spent the time required to bring up support artillery to blast the Austrian positions. The delay was fortunate for the Austrians, but that came as little consolation to the men of the 11th Marschbrigade, whose positions were flayed by the artillery of a Russian corps. The Austrians in the treeline had no shelter from the bombardment and faced not only shrapnel and explosions but the prospect of deadly slivers of wood flying through the air. Confusion about the timing of the assault, prompted by the rapid change from an advance in exploitation to set-piece battle, saw the artillery die down minutes before the first Russian attack began.

The Austrians were able to keep up a continuous fire as the Russians advanced onward, while their opponents remained somewhat short of ammunition, having expended much of their available rifle reloads in action earlier. The freshness of the Austrian forces gave them an advantage over the leading Russian forces, who had been engaged for hours beforehand. Those same Russians had been victorious that day, and their pride drove them into the forest despite the severe losses being inflicted on them. A counterattack by a reserve battalion with bayonet drove the Russians back from the treeline, while accurate fire at close range took a disproportionate toll on the Russian officers. More Russians were fed into the grinder of the forest, this time without regard for careful advances or maintaining order. Their corps commander was determined to force a breakthrough and continue with his exploitation of earlier successes; it was, however, not to be. The confusion of the fighting in the woods tied the Russians up for hours into the night, and saw not a few incidents of Russian units firing on each other as darkness descended and the 11th Marschbrigade fell back ever further into the woods.

Finally, the Russian pressure having slacked off after dark, the Austrians made to withdraw. Their commander had been sent back hours earlier with a bullet wound in his shoulder, but his example had made the difference. They had suffered appalling casualties, but their stand had saved Third Army from one threat of destruction. The withdrawal they covered saved it from another.


AUSTRIAN RIGHT


The 122nd Landwehr Brigade was at the extreme end of the right flank, near to the headwaters of the Gnila Lipa tributary of the Dniester River, intended to be the decisive point of the engagement. General Brudermann placed his hopes for a victory in the reliable German and Hungarian units forcing a breach in the Russian lines oblique to their flanks, forcing them back in a northerly and easterly direction against the Bug. Kövess, in the meantime, would use the Gnila Lipa as a barrier to delay Eighth Army until Third Army had been dealt with. The Russians would then be faced with making a retreat across the Bug back in the direction of Dubno while under pressure and with marauding Austrian cavalry in their rear. The six battalions of the 1st Landesschützenregiment that comprised the brigade represented the crack forces of the military of the entire Austrian half of the kingdom. Third Army had lost the Kaiserjäger to Fourth Army, but the men of the Landesschützen regiment were determined to show that they were every bit as capable by inflicting a major defeat on the Russians before the Emperor’s favored regiments saw action. As the first company began leaving its assembly point the Generalmajor of the brigade was there on horseback to see them off, and remind them of the high expectations held for their performance.

Opposite the Landesschützen were the usual stolid Russian peasants, supported by machine guns and dug in with grim fatalism; the men of the Landesschützen held them in contempt as Slavic barbarians. The eruption of fire from the Russian trenches was borne up by the brigade, which began its own steady staccato of rifle fire to try and suppress the Russians. Artillery support was more lavish on the right flank, and Austrian howitzers pumped shells into the Russian trenches to try and quiet the enemy. Here they drove forward with full energy and confidence, and the losses suffered did not halt the momentum of their drive into the Russian trenches. The usual round of bloody close-quarters combat followed, with the Russians getting the worst of it, and attempting to flee out of the trenches. They were shot down by the Landesschützen from behind, as the latter maintained cohesion and continued their attack into the second line of trenches nearby. The Russians hesitated to fire on their own men, giving the Austrians enough cover to reach that line without suffering severe casualties, thus maintaining the momentum. The arrival of more troops to the push from the main body of the brigade allowed them to carry over the last line of Russian forces, and for a moment achieve a breakthrough.

Noon was now past, however, and the other Austrian attacks were running into trouble. The full scale attack on the Russian center had bogged down with heavy losses, while the left flank recoiled backwards. Brudermann, sensing a decisive moment, decided to commit his cavalry to shoring up the center attack; he did not learn of the success of the 122nd Brigade until it was too late to recall the massed hussars. The charge of the 11th Honvéd cavalry division, complete with fur-lined hats and gold braid tunics, appeared to be taken from a Napoleonic campaign. The results were absolutely devastating as the Russians directed their fire onto the horsemen, mangling man and animal with indiscriminate destructive power. The entire division pressed on, and for a moment it seemed as if it might reach the Russian lines, but the slaughter was too great, and it melted away as it suffered unendurable casualties. Brudermann, watching the assault from an observation post near the front lines, went numb with shock. His chief-of-staff, Generalmajor Pfeiffer, seized control of the situation long enough to cancel the planned attacks of two more cavalry divisions, and ordered a pullback of Third Army to defensible positions kilometers away.

The arrival of an urgent telegraph from Armeegruppe Kövess changed the strategic picture for the worse, even on top of the heavy casualties Third Army had already suffered. The Russian Eighth Army had crossed the Gnila Lipa to the south, and there was no prospect of his two corps stopping their advance. His scouts reported that Brusilov had definitely turned to an oblique advance, clearly aimed at attacking the flanks of Third Army. Brudermann, stunned by the course of events and already fearing his dismissal, ordered a full scale retreat and retired back to his army headquarters. Pfieffer was left to oversee the retreat, and ordered the army reserves to the collapsing left flank. He also assigned the 122nd Brigade to pull out of its flanking success and reorient itself to face any advance by Brusilov on the right flank of Third Army. The withdrawal of the advance on the center was already underway, but Pfeiffer realized the retreat would have to be longer as the first reports on casualties came in. By two o’clock it had become a retreat half-way to Lemburg, and the press of the Russians left it doubtful if the Army could reorganize itself short of that great fortress city.

The 122nd Brigade pulled out with great reluctance from the captured Russian trenches, unimpeded by enemy action. Many of the men took various trophies, such as captured Russian rifles, as mementos of their success in what was shaping up to be a disaster. Of the many units of Third Army, it seemed as if they alone possessed any remaining fighting spirits. That was tested in a stiff fight on the flanks with lead elements of Brusilov’s army as Third Army pulled away; they kept the enemy at bay, delaying the joining of the two Russian armies until their union snapped down on empty countryside. It was not, however, a victory. Third Army had lost heavily throughout its ranks, and if it had gotten away in the end, there was now little prospect of Third Army reorganizing to stop them short of Lemburg. The arrival of Second Army from the Balkans would improve the balance of forces, but for the time being the Russians were in the ascendance in Eastern Galicia. For now there was nothing the KuK Armee could do but retreat, and hope that the rough terrain and bad roads of Galicia bought them enough time to recover the situation before the Russians forced another decisive engagement.


WEGRÓW, POLAND
2 SEPTEMBER 1914


The roar of a cannonade met in a general field clash rolled over the hills and through the valley of the river Liwiec. The Russians were not defending here, in a direct clash between two armies. They were attacking, and the forefront of that attack was the full strength of the Grenadier Corps. Two divisions of Grenadiers were in the front, forming the striking fist of the attack on Von Kluck's First Army. These units were the finest of the Russian Army, fully equipped with modern rifles, with machine-guns, and with their full compliment of artillery, each unit kept to full strength with some of the finest of the Tsar's men.

The cavalry action of the day before had allowed the Russians set themselves up for crossing the river without facing opposition. Now, having formed up their units for the advance, with a good night's rest before them and food in their bellies, the Grenadiers formed the principle part of a five-division infantry advance against the Germans who were coming up to meet them. Two divisions of cavalry provided an extensive screen to either flank and two regiments of Don Cossacks screened the central advance, with two more cavalry divisions in reserve. The infantry and artillery XIVth corps were still crossing the Liwiec to the rear; but at the same time, Von Kluck had only been able to bring three corps in action so far himself. Fortunately these were the regular troops of II, III, and IV Army Corps.

Having gained the heights above the valley of the Liwiec the Russians advanced with great confidence under the instructions of their commander, Baron Salza. The heavy Russian artillery lagged behind the deployment of the infantry, which advanced very crisply, and thus they were supported only by the constant barrage of the field guns of the divisions and the corps. Through fields high with wheat and pastures where cows had grazed before the hungry bellies of the cavalry had swept through, men now fought and died.

Against the Grenadiers the German advance of artillery was not so acute as it normally had been, and the artillerists of the Grenadier Corps worked their guns with admirable swiftness in supporting the steady advance of the Russians. The problem was that the Russians themselves, while advancing, were being met by the direct advance of the Germans, with II Corps on the right to face the advance of the Grenadiers (Russian XVI corps, overstrength with three divisions, filled 4th Army's front), ordered to advance to the heights over the Liwiec so that the crossing might be commanded by the German howitzers.

Von Kluck had issued those orders with no real idea of the actual situation thanks to the great superiourity and success of the Russian cavalry in their operations, and now there was scarcely anything he could do to get the better of the situation in which his forces clashed upon the field than to feed in his troops and trust to the weight of numbers until some sense could be made of the situation. As the forces met in the morning the issue thus came down to the rapidity of the advance and the elan of the troops.

On the German left four divisions were arrayed against three Russian, though the Russian cavalry prevented a flanking manoeuvre with aggressive action throughout the day. The Cossacks fell back, as did the skirmish lines, as the two sides drew closer. In the engagement between the skirmish lines heavy casualties had already been suffered, but that was nothing compared to what would come, as surely it must. The German howitzers concentrated on counterbattery fire as the 7.7cm fielded pieces fired into the advancing Russians as rapidly as they could. The Russians, for their part, kept their guns in action despite the pounding they received from the German howitzers and tore through the German ranks with them in result.

Machine-gun fire was hellacious against the men for the ranks had been formed in the old way and there was little that could be said for the battle save that it was a bloodbath. Both sides advanced in order to close to range, and the terrain was such that the rifle fire of both sides was telling on the other from a thousand yards, after they had already suffered extensively from the artillery as they closed. With murderous slow steadiness did the ranks decline in their numbers, as men fell in knots and clumps to the detonation of shrapnel shells and the long-range fire of the automatic weapons.

The Russian troops of the XVI corps, outnumbered, were at a disadvantage in every way against the German regulars they faced. There, then, on the Russian right flank, the battle went poorly for XVI corps from the start. The weight of the Germans recoilled them in a crisp advance through the late morn, as the fighting came down to the bayonet—still long before noon--and the two forces clashed outright, whole regiments bursting from the concealment tenuously offered by the lightly rolling terrain in places to cross the remaining distance at a dog-trot as they expended their magazines. No entrenchments were used by either side, and so the Russians, met at point of bayonet and outnumbered, resisted solidly but when broke were forced back in general flight.

Where the Germans had to advance throughout the full thousand meters along the long, flat plains, where there was not even the slightest deviation in the terrain to give them cover, the casualties were immeasurably worse, and in many units every other man fell on the field, but as the success of the luckier units began visible they pressed on with the same ardour into the Russian fire and met them also with the bayonet, or followed in the regiments which had routed their Russian opponents, and in this way the whole of the German force of III and IV corps advanced and the Russians of XVI corps were forced into a general retreat along that whole sector.

Generalmajor von Kuhl was fully involved in the effort of bringing up the rest of the corps and committing them to the battle. The headquarters was desperately trying to establish control over the front-line units once again, but he simply didn't care. His own interest was to concentrate the full strength of 1st Army against the enemy as quickly as possible and in this he performed his task with admirable discipline. From every direction the remaining four corps of 1st Army converged on a line fixed to the map by the telegraph signals, ten kilometers long, which marked the current front of engagement. Victory would come, as it had in the Franco-Prussian War, if the Army headquarters could get enough of the corps in the right places at the right times, which would serve to overcome all the élan of the Russians and render their efforts unavailing, if it was accomplished, and so it had to be accomplished.

On the German Left, their success continued. Local reserves of the Russian divisions involved in the fighting were committed to the action and they advanced crisply on the offensive. There was no attempt to dig in fortifications or try to hold a defensive line before counterattacking. Baron Salza demanded the attack, and his divisional commanders gave it to him. Even as the Russian artillery, brought right up to the front, fired while retreating in a staged withdrawal to try and cover the confused mass of infantry which broke to the rear as they faltered before German bayonets to half again their numbers after the reaping fire of the mausers in the hands of drilled regulars, fresh units were coming up.

They, in order, passed forward even as the broken regiments collapsed around them. This had an effect which allowed the surviving Russian officers—and there were already shockingly few—to rally those units, and so again the doubtful combat was sustained as massed rifle fire was vigorously exchanged at ranges that again drew progressively closer. The Germans, however, had already been victorious in one close encounter and their officers led them forward for another, the German artillery working forward with them right to the front, where the losses inflicted by the Russian machine-guns upon them bordered upon astronomical, and many battery commanders press-ganged men from the infantry regiments as they passed to replace their own murderous losses.

Rapid-firing artillery and the masses of bullets cut through the high wheat wherever it fell short of its intended human targets, and soon there were fires burning in little spots here and there, which grew into proper brush fires, and threatened to burn the wounded alive, their screams for help going mostly unheard as the constant thunder of the field cannon obscured every other sound save for the voices of one's officer but a few meters away yelling himself hoarse. Rows of gray uniforms advanced through the wheat and they died in it as it whisked at their thighs; so much of it already chopped down by the massed fire of the guns in many places it was like the harvest had taken place, but moreover, at every partition in the fields, evey wall, every open pasture, sighted in as a killing field for the Russian guns besides, such that even if the advance across the flat ground was a perfect killing zone the obstacles were worse.

Where a man stood in uniform one moment would be a warm and settling corpse on the ground the next. Blood watered these fields today as the bodies fell, perhaps to never be found, till in ages later a farm would turn up the bones and remark upon the battle which had been fought here generations past. Yet for all the vigour of the Russian artillery it was matched by the German artillery, and for every man in the green-gray of the Russian uniforms who pressed home with his solid Russian bayonet for the counterattack, there were two Germans.

The Russian counterattack met the Germans head on as the ragged lines collided with the desperate shouts of men yelling at each other in fury and fright and the constant crackle of the rifles firing all around them, without ever ceasing, as the men cleared out of the savage killing ground of the field cannon and entered that of their own doing as fire came down upon them from at least the front constantly and sometimes from every side as well. The energy of the engagement came in the rush to press home bayonet attacks by the Russians and in the vigorous fire of the Germans which was maintained until the last moment when, as the collision took place, they did not hesitate to meet it by advancing with their own bayonets.

A hard fight was again thus contested at close range. It raged without decision for many minutes during which it seemed that no mortal soul could really withstand the scale of the slaughter all around, and yet they did, in a way that drove with intensity to the depth of commitment in these men, to the grim and determined motivation which fueled them for a cause it scarcely seemed to which they might ever really adhere; and yet they did, and they fought, and even the regiments which had previously been routed fought well, at least until their officers had been killed.

Those gray lines of Germans finally won the day. They pushed home their attacks with such a preponderence of numbers, made worse by the fighting in the early part of the day, that for the most part they outnumbered the Russians two to one; and for all the Russians loved to attack with the bayonet the Germans were not afraid to employ it either, and they had done much more execution upon their opponents in the process of closing the range, with their artillery unhindered and that the of the enemy under the constant barrage of the howitzers. The Germans broke through, Russian XVI Corps was shattered, and they pushed on toward the heights over the river Liwiec in apparent victory. Left behind were the bodies of eight thousand dead and dying men of both sides strewn through the summer's wheat.

Yet this had only been half of the morning's battle.

At the same time that Russian XVI Corps was fighting its desperate and ultimately futile struggle against the weight of German III and IV Corps, the German II Corps had been subject to a direct frontal assault by the Russian Grenadier Corps. Three regiments had attacked either division of II Corps and two more regiments—the 5th Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Elizabeth Theodorovna's Kiev Grenadier Regiment and the famous 1st Emperor Alexander II's Yekaterinoslav Life Guards Grenadier Regiment—formed the reserve of the attack.

The Grenadiers advanced with their regimental bands playing Slavyanka in unison, making a regular march in disciplined order directly at the advancing Germans. Their own artillery dueled vigorously with the Germans despite the advantage of the German howitzers, and the thunder of the guns echoed and roared and pulsed over the troops of the both sides as the light guns soon turned their attention to playing through the ranks of men. The Grenadiers, with their lush green uniforms and gray sashes, fell in great numbers thanks to the work of the German gunners, but their own guns--the artillery was also Grenadiers—played havoc upon the forward positioned German guns.

Passing through the hail of death the two sides quickly closed in on each other until individual men could be clearly made out and the fire-and-advance of the rifles brought a storm of lead through the ranks. The Germans faltered, coming under such heavy artillery fire as they had not previously experienced in the war, but their officers pressed them onwards and the artillery was again pressed close to the front despite the hideous casualties among the gunners that entailed, that the advance might be properly supported throughout.

Yet against that the Russians simply pushed on relentlessly, without an ounce of fear shown, not wavering a single time. The Grenadiers struck up their regimental quick-marches at three hundred meters and increased their rate of march to a splendid one hundred and fourty paces to the minute. Long firm lines of cold steel were presented by the Grenadiers as the range closed in, bayonets presented on the ends of their long mosin-nagants for the shock of impact, even as the lush green of their fine uniforms was splashed with the blood of their comrades. Yet they forged on, the bands playing right in the front and the colours bourne forward, until they were at one hundred yards. Then all along the line rose up a great “Urragh!” and they dashed in the last short distance in a wave of running men with fixed bayonets, even as artillery and machine-gun fire and massed rifles crashed down in and upon them.

A doubtful struggle was at once in hand. The Russians nearly outnumbered the Germans with only three regiments on account of the larger size of their battalions as it was; this meant that the German reinforcements had to be quickly committed to stem the tide as their front lines simply collapsed under the force of the good old Russian bayonet. The German reinforcements stabilized the situation and at close range an incredible stalemate of killing began in the wide open; it was only a stalemate in the sense that for a moment neither side advanced. In every other respect it was a field of pure murder, for the fire poured down constantly and in many other areas fighting at the bayonet continued.

The commander of the Grenadier Corps had not hesitated. From the moment the German resistance stiffened and it became clear their own reserves had been thrown in, he had ordered the reserves forward. These, the very best troops of the Grenadiers, already the best of the Russians, were sent forward on a forced march of more than a kilometer to rapidly be flung into the battle, but such strong souls they were that they took this march in the greatest of ease, even as the howitzers of the Germans fired down into their midst, and at once on reaching the scene of the close combat flung themselves, another eight thousand men altogether, into the heat of the press of combat between the two armies at such close range.

One of the two divisions of German II Corps was the 4th Infantry Division, to which was attached the 2nd Brandenburg Regiment of Dragoons. It had returned to the divisional reserve after the skimishes of the day before had pushed it back, and now it was concentrated as part of the reserve of the corps. Altogether now the whole reserve of the corps consisted of a battalion of jaegers, a battalion of armed pioneers, and 2nd Brandenburg and Neumärkisches Grenadier-zu-Pferde Regiments of cavalry, fortunately both mounted rifles.

Günther von Pannewitz, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, was confronted with the complete collapse of his command. Units were streaming back from the front in general retreat. Chaos was everywhere and most of the frontline officers had been killed. He looked around grimly to his command staff and made a stiff gesture toward their equipment. “This is all useless now!” He barked. “Draw your swords, go and rally whatever men you can—where a battalion or a company or a platoon commander has fallen, take his place, and make the men hold! Your lives are forfeit and so it remains to honour your Kaiser and your country!”

His charger was ready for him and turned and it mounted it smoothly, slinging himself into the saddle. The divisional headquarters staff desperated with a grim determination; some men also mounted their horses and the rest, swords drawn, simply went out to find whatever men they could and rally them. General von Pannewitz himself rode along his men, trying to restore cohesion to whatever units he could and to rally them by example. Fire came around them from every side, and the Russians continued their solid advance without hesitation against an enemy they clearly had beaten—yet, somehow, Pannewitz and his staff officers managed by their example to revive the spirit of some of the shattered troops and they stood firm and commenced with a sudden and surprising fusiliade which for the moment served to halt the Russians.

German 3rd Infantry Division was in full retreat. Its officers had failed to successfully rally any of their men, and before the attack of the 5th Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Elizabeth Theodorovna's Kiev Grenadiers they crumbled and all that was left of the division by this point was the men streaming to the rear, and its mounted grenadiers regiment with the corps headquarters, already being deployed as part of the rear guard. The commander of II Corps managed to get a rear guard together, and only then on account of fact that Von Pannewitz with the 4th Division managed to hold longer than seemed possible.

The press of the 1st Emperor Alexander II's Yekaterinoslav Life Guards Grenadiers was to great for Von Pannewitz's hastily rallied units to hold back. “Hold steady!” He had shouted again and again as he rode back and forth down the lines with sword drawn until it seemed impossible that he had not been killed, and finally he was, by the splutter of a volley of massed rifles of the Life Guards Grenadiers. At his death, and the death of men of his staff officers who had tried to rally the men besides, their brief renewal of the desperate struggle faded and all that was left of the 4th Infantry Division as well was the stream of shattered men in gray back toward the rear as the Grenadier Corps crisply advanced, even overcoming the guns and capturing them as they fired shrapnel murderously into the ranks of the Russian Grenadiers until the last moment, where the artillerymen were overwhelmed and slaughtered by Russian bayonet.

Now all that was left were the corps howitzers, two battalions, and two cavalry regiments, formed into a crude rear guard to secure the retreat of the broken men of the corps, strung out in a desperate line in which the 2nd Brandenburg—and among them Margrete Hoffmeyer—would soon be in a hopeless struggle for the life of their broken corps. The commander of the Grenadier Corps, having some idea of the severity of the situation on the Russian right flank, was already preparing to execute a right wheel with his forces that would plunge the Grenadier Corps into the rear into the victorious Germans. The afternoon seemed Russia's for the taking.

Look out, Germans!